people should be willing to receive it. 2. That they should be willing
and able to do what is necessary for its preservation. 3. That they
should be willing and able to fulfill the duties and discharge the
functions which it imposes on them.

The willingness of the people to accept representative government only
becomes a practical question when an enlightened ruler, or a foreign
nation or nations who have gained power over the country, are disposed
to offer it the boon. To individual reformers the question is almost
irrelevant, since, if no other objection can be made to their
enterprise than that the opinion of the nation is not yet on their
side, they have the ready and proper answer, that to bring it over to
their side is the very end they aim at. When opinion is really
adverse, its hostility is usually to the fact of change rather than to
representative government in itself. The contrary case is not indeed
unexampled; there has sometimes been a religious repugnance to any
limitation of the power of a particular line of rulers; but, in
general, the doctrine of passive obedience meant only submission to
the will of the powers that be, whether monarchical or popular. In any
case in which the attempt to introduce representative government is at
all likely to be made, indifference to it, and inability to understand
its processes and requirements, rather than positive opposition, are
the obstacles to be expected. These, however, are as fatal, and may be
as hard to be got rid of as actual aversion; it being easier, in most
cases, to change the direction of an active feeling than to create one
in a state previously passive. When a people have no sufficient value
for, and attachment to, a representative constitution, they have next
to no chance of retaining it. In every country, the executive is the
branch of the government which wields the immediate power, and is in
direct contact with the public; to it, principally, the hopes and