The most obvious of these cases is the one already considered, in
which the people have still to learn the first lesson of civilization,
that of obedience. A race who have been trained in energy and courage
by struggles with Nature and their neighbors, but who have not yet
settled down into permanent obedience to any common superior, would be
little likely to acquire this habit under the collective government of
their own body. A representative assembly drawn from among themselves
would simply reflect their own turbulent insubordination. It would
refuse its authority to all proceedings which would impose, on their
savage independence, any improving restraint. The mode in which such
tribes are usually brought to submit to the primary conditions of
civilized society is through the necessities of warfare, and the
despotic authority indispensable to military command. A military
leader is the only superior to whom they will submit, except
occasionally some prophet supposed to be inspired from above, or
conjurer regarded as possessing miraculous power. These may exercise a
temporary ascendancy, but as it is merely personal, it rarely effects
any change in the general habits of the people, unless the prophet,
like Mohammed, is also a military chief, and goes forth the armed
apostle of a new religion; or unless the military chiefs ally
themselves with his influence, and turn it into a prop for their own
government.

A people are no less unfitted for representative government by the
contrary fault to that last specified--by extreme passiveness, and
ready submission to tyranny. If a people thus prostrated by character
and circumstances could obtain representative institutions, they would
inevitably choose their tyrants as their representatives, and the yoke
would be made heavier on them by the contrivance which _primâ facie_