the whole body. In it alone do we find the comprehensive views,
knowledge of the members of which it consists and of their aims, an
idea of outward relationships, full and accurate information, in
short, the superior intelligence which conceives what is best for
the common interests, and adapts means to ends. If it falters and
is no longer obeyed, if it is forced and pushed from without by a
violent pressure, it ceases to control public affairs, and the
social organization retrogrades by many steps. Through the
dissolution of society, and the isolation of individuals, each man
returns to his original feeble state, while power is vested in
passing aggregates that like whirlwinds spring up from the human
dust. -- One may divine how this power, which the most competent
find it difficult to apply properly, is exercised by bands of men
springing out of nowhere. It is a matter of supplies, of their
possessions, price and distribution. It is a matter of taxes, its
proportion, apportionment and collection; of private property, its
varieties, rights, and limitations It is a problem of public
authority, its allocation and its limits; of all those delicate
cogwheels which, working into each other, constitute the great
economic, social, and political machine. Each band in its own
canton lays its rude hands on the wheels within its reach. They
wrench or break them haphazardly, under the impulse of the moment,
heedless and indifferent to consequences, even when the reaction of
to-morrow crushes them in the ruin that they cause to day. Thus do
unchained Negroes, each pulling and hauling his own way, undertake
to manage a ship of which they have just obtained mastery. -- In
such a state of things white men are hardly worth more than black
ones. For, not only is the band, whose aim is violence, composed of
those who are most destitute, most wildly enthusiastic, and most
inclined to destructiveness and to license. But also, as this band