employed. Of what efficacy are rules of procedure in securing the ends
of justice if the moral condition of the people is such that the
witnesses generally lie, and the judges and their subordinates take
bribes? Again, how can institutions provide a good municipal
administration if there exists such indifference to the subject that
those who would administer honestly and capably can not be induced to
serve, and the duties are left to those who undertake them because
they have some private interest to be promoted? Of what avail is the
most broadly popular representative system if the electors do not care
to choose the best member of Parliament, but choose him who will spend
most money to be elected? How can a representative assembly work for
good if its members can be bought, or if their excitability of
temperament, uncorrected by public discipline or private self-control,
makes them incapable of calm deliberation, and they resort to manual
violence on the floor of the House, or shoot at one another with
rifles? How, again, can government, or any joint concern, be carried
on in a tolerable manner by people so envious that, if one among them
seems likely to succeed in any thing, those who ought to cooperate
with him form a tacit combination to make him fail? Whenever the
general disposition of the people is such that each individual regards
those only of his interests which are selfish, and does not dwell on,
or concern himself for, his share of the general interest, in such a
state of things good government is impossible. The influence of
defects of intelligence in obstructing all the elements of good
government requires no illustration. Government consists of acts done
by human beings; and if the agents, or those who choose the agents, or
those to whom the agents are responsible, or the lookers-on whose
opinion ought to influence and check all these, are mere masses of
ignorance, stupidity, and baleful prejudice, every operation of
government will go wrong; while, in proportion as the men rise above