even for a short time, they are unlikely long to enjoy it. Again, a
people may be unwilling or unable to fulfill the duties which a
particular form of government requires of them. A rude people, though
in some degree alive to the benefits of civilized society, may be
unable to practice the forbearances which it demands; their passions
may be too violent, or their personal pride too exacting, to forego
private conflict, and leave to the laws the avenging of their real or
supposed wrongs. In such a case, a civilized government, to be really
advantageous to them, will require to be in a considerable degree
despotic; one over which they do not themselves exercise control, and
which imposes a great amount of forcible restraint upon their actions.
Again, a people must be considered unfit for more than a limited and
qualified freedom who will not co-operate actively with the law and
the public authorities in the repression of evil-doers. A people who
are more disposed to shelter a criminal than to apprehend him; who,
like the Hindoos, will perjure themselves to screen the man who has
robbed them, rather than take trouble or expose themselves to
vindictiveness by giving evidence against him; who, like some nations
of Europe down to a recent date, if a man poniards another in the
public street, pass by on the other side, because it is the business
of the police to look to the matter, and it is safer not to interfere
in what does not concern them; a people who are revolted by an
execution, but not shocked at an assassination--require that the
public authorities should be armed with much sterner powers of
repression than elsewhere, since the first indispensable requisites of
civilized life have nothing else to rest on. These deplorable states
of feeling, in any people who have emerged from savage life, are, no
doubt, usually the consequence of previous bad government, which has
taught them to regard the law as made for other ends than their good,
and its administrators as worse enemies than those who openly violate