and the conditions of command and obedience, are the most powerful of
the influences, except their religious belief, which make them what
they are, and enable them to become what they can be. They may be
stopped short at any point in their progress by defective adaptation
of their government to that particular stage of advancement. And the
one indispensable merit of a government, in favor of which it may be
forgiven almost any amount of other demerit compatible with progress,
is that its operation on the people is favorable, or not unfavorable,
to the next step which it is necessary for them to take in order to
raise themselves to a higher level.

Thus (to repeat a former example), a people in a state of savage
independence, in which every one lives for himself, exempt, unless by
fits, from any external control, is practically incapable of making
any progress in civilization until it has learned to obey. The
indispensable virtue, therefore, in a government which establishes
itself over a people of this sort is that it make itself obeyed. To
enable it to do this, the constitution of the government must be
nearly, or quite despotic. A constitution in any degree popular,
dependent on the voluntary surrender by the different members of the
community of their individual freedom of action, would fail to enforce
the first lesson which the pupils, in this stage of their progress,
require. Accordingly, the civilization of such tribes, when not the
result of juxtaposition with others already civilized, is almost
always the work of an absolute ruler, deriving his power either from
religion or military prowess--very often from foreign arms.

Again, uncivilized races, and the bravest and most energetic still
more than the rest, are averse to continuous labor of an unexciting
kind. Yet all real civilization is at this price; without such labor,