A Treatise on the Methods of Observation and Reasoning in Politics (V. 2)
by George Cornewall Lewis (9780217434652)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: offer of commercial or other advantages, to postpone or evade the fulfilment of its treaty-obligations; or by inducing a fourth state, D, to invade B. The state B may, in return, adopt various measures for frustrating these attempts of C to prevent it from assisting A: for example, it may suppress the insurrectionary movements excited with a view of diverting its troops, or it may negotiate separately with state D for a cessation of hostilities. These measures may be met by other counter-measures on the part of state C, until the position of the parties becomes as complicated as a game of chess. Now, upon a retrospect of the operation of the treaty, of the influences used to counteract it, of the influences used to counteract these influences, and so on in succession, and upon a comparison of the prospective views with the actual result, it will be readily perceived that, in anticipating the probable operation of a political cause, where large bodies of men and powerful conflicting interests are involved, we can only speak of its tendency, and can never venture to predict its actual effect. It happens perpetually, in political as in private life, that unforeseen obstacles to the best-calculated plans arise in practice; and that the tendency, or natural operation, of a cause is frustrated by events which no sagacity could have predicted, and no contrivance could have prevented. In the preceding remarks, we have attempted to elucidate the prediction of future political events, considered as a hypothetical problem for the discovery of a specific effect. We shall, however, have occasion hereafter, in another part of this treatise, to investigate the general subject of political prediction, when we shall endeavour to trace more fully the conditions to which it is subject. (l6) (1...

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