negligent as those whom they ought to check, and if the public, the
mainspring of the whole checking machinery, are too ignorant, too
passive, or too careless and inattentive to do their part, little
benefit will be derived from the best administrative apparatus. Yet a
good apparatus is always preferable to a bad. It enables such
insufficient moving or checking power as exists to act at the greatest
advantage; and without it, no amount of moving or checking power would
be sufficient. Publicity, for instance, is no impediment to evil, nor
stimulus to good, if the public will not look at what is done; but
without publicity, how could they either check or encourage what they
were not permitted to see? The ideally perfect constitution of a
public office is that in which the interest of the functionary is
entirely coincident with his duty. No mere system will make it so, but
still less can it be made so without a system, aptly devised for the
purpose.

What we have said of the arrangements for the detailed administration
of the government is still more evidently true of its general
constitution. All government which aims at being good is an
organization of some part of the good qualities existing in the
individual members of the community for the conduct of its collective
affairs. A representative constitution is a means of bringing the
general standard of intelligence and honesty existing in the
community, and the individual intellect and virtue of its wisest
members, more directly to bear upon the government, and investing them
with greater influence in it than they would have under any other mode
of organization; though, under any, such influence as they do have is
the source of all good that there is in the government, and the
hindrance of every evil that there is not. The greater the amount of
these good qualities which the institutions of a country succeed in