in a fair way to pass rapidly into a higher stage. Nor is there any
mode in which political institutions can contribute more effectually
to the improvement of the people than by doing their more direct work
well. And reversely, if their machinery is so badly constructed that
they do their own particular business ill, the effect is felt in a
thousand ways in lowering the morality and deadening the intelligence
and activity of the people. But the distinction is nevertheless real,
because this is only one of the means by which political institutions
improve or deteriorate the human mind, and the causes and modes of
that beneficial or injurious influence remain a distinct and much
wider subject of study.

Of the two modes of operation by which a form of government or set of
political institutions affects the welfare of the community--its
operation as an agency of national education, and its arrangements for
conducting the collective affairs of the community in the state of
education in which they already are, the last evidently varies much
less, from difference of country and state of civilization, than the
first. It has also much less to do with the fundamental constitution
of the government. The mode of conducting the practical business of
government, which is best under a free constitution, would generally
be best also in an absolute monarchy, only an absolute monarchy is not
so likely to practice it. The laws of property, for example; the
principles of evidence and judicial procedure; the system of taxation
and of financial administration, need not necessarily be different in
different forms of government. Each of these matters has principles
and rules of its own, which are a subject of separate study. General
jurisprudence, civil and penal legislation, financial and commercial
policy, are sciences in themselves, or, rather, separate members of
the comprehensive science or art of government; and the most