as illustrated during his lifetime. It is not probable that the
military, monarchical system--founded upon conquests achieved by
barbarians and pirates of a distant epoch over an effete civilization and
over antique institutions of intolerable profligacy--will soon come to an
end in the older world. And it is the business of Europeans so to deal
with the institutions of their inheritance or their choice as to ensure
their steady melioration and to provide for the highest interests of the
people. It matters comparatively little by what name a government is
called, so long as the intellectual and moral development of mankind, and
the maintenance of justice among individuals, are its leading principles.
A government, like an individual, may remain far below its ideal; but,
without an ideal, governments and individuals are alike contemptible.
It is tyranny only--whether individual or popular--that utters its feeble
sneers at the ideologists, as if mankind were brutes to whom instincts
were all in all and ideas nothing. Where intellect and justice are
enslaved by that unholy trinity--Force; Dogma, and Ignorance--the
tendency of governments, and of those subjected to them, must of
necessity be retrograde and downward.

There can be little doubt to those who observe the movements of mankind
during the course of the fourteen centuries since the fall of the Roman
Empire--a mere fragment of human history--that its progress, however
concealed or impeded, and whether for weal or woe, is towards democracy;
for it is the tendency of science to liberate and to equalize the
physical and even the intellectual forces of humanity. A horse and a
suit of armour would now hardly enable the fortunate possessor of such
advantages to conquer a kingdom, nor can wealth and learning be
monopolised in these latter days by a favoured few. Yet veneration for a
crown and a privileged church--as if without them and without their close
connection with each other law and religion were impossible--makes