the different governments which coexisted in the same age, no amount
of disorder which exaggeration itself can pretend to have existed
amidst the publicity of the free states can be compared for a moment
with the contemptuous trampling upon the mass of the people which
pervaded the whole life of the monarchical countries, or the
disgusting individual tyranny which was of more than daily occurrence
under the systems of plunder which they called fiscal arrangements,
and in the secrecy of their frightful courts of justice.

It must be acknowledged that the benefits of freedom, so far as they
have hitherto been enjoyed, were obtained by the extension of its
privileges to a part only of the community; and that a government in
which they are extended impartially to all is a desideratum still
unrealized. But, though every approach to this has an independent
value, and in many cases more than an approach could not, in the
existing state of general improvement, be made, the participation of
all in these benefits is the ideally perfect conception of free
government. In proportion as any, no matter who, are excluded from it,
the interests of the excluded are left without the guaranty accorded
to the rest, and they themselves have less scope and encouragement
than they might otherwise have to that exertion of their energies for
the good of themselves and of the community, to which the general
prosperity is always proportioned.

Thus stands the case as regards present well-being--the good
management of the affairs of the existing generation. If we now pass
to the influence of the form of government upon character, we shall
find the superiority of popular government over every other to be, if
possible, still more decided and indisputable.