It is thus that the "rule of the majority" as a political system is
established. It is in essence nothing but the discredited and
discreditable principle that "might makes right"; but early in the life of
a republic this essential character of government by majority is not seen.
The habit of submitting all questions of policy to the arbitrament of
counting noses and assenting without question to the result invests the
ordeal with a seeming sanctity, and what was at first obeyed as the
command of power comes to be revered as the oracle of wisdom. The
innumerable instances--such as the famous ones of Galileo and Keeley--in
which one man has been right and all the rest of the race wrong, are
overlooked, or their significance missed, and "public opinion" is followed
as a divine and infallible guide through every bog into which it blindly
stumbles and over every precipice in its fortuitous path. Clearly, sooner
or later will be encountered a bog that will smother or a precipice that
will crush. Thoroughly to apprehend the absurdity of the ancient faith in
the wisdom of majorities let the loyal reader try to fancy our gracious
Sovereign by any possibility wrong, or his unanimous Ministry by any
possibility right!

During the latter half of the "nineteenth century" there arose in the
Connected States a political element opposed to all government, which
frankly declared its object to be anarchy. This astonishing heresy was not
of indigenous growth: its seeds were imported from Europe by the
emigration or banishment thence of criminals congenitally incapable of
understanding and valuing the blessings of monarchical institutions, and
whose method of protest was murder. The governments against which they
conspired in their native lands were too strong in authority and too
enlightened in policy for them to overthrow. Hundreds of them were put to
death, thousands imprisoned and sent into exile. But in America, whither
those who escaped fled for safety, they found conditions entirely