Here was an effort to bring all institutions to the test of logic which he thought highly dangerous.

"No rational man ever did govern himself," he said, "by abstractions and universals." The question for him was not the abstract rightness of the system upon some set of _a priori_ principles but whether, on the whole, that system worked for the happiness of the community.

He did not doubt that it did; and to overthrow a structure so nobly tested by the pressure of events in favor of some theories outside historic experience seemed to him ruinous to society.

Government, for him, was the general harmony of diverse interests; and the continual adjustments and exquisite modifications of which it stood in need were admirably discovered in the existing system.

Principles were thus unimportant compared to the problem of their application.