contrivances as far as we will, a man does not choose even an
instrument of timber and iron on the sole ground that it is in itself
the best. He considers whether he possesses the other requisites which
must be combined with it to render its employment advantageous, and,
in particular whether those by whom it will have to be worked possess
the knowledge and skill necessary for its management. On the other
hand, neither are those who speak of institutions as if they were a
kind of living organisms really the political fatalists they give
themselves out to be. They do not pretend that mankind have absolutely
no range of choice as to the government they will live under, or that
a consideration of the consequences which flow from different forms of
polity is no element at all in deciding which of them should be
preferred. But, though each side greatly exaggerates its own theory,
out of opposition to the other, and no one holds without modification
to either, the two doctrines correspond to a deep-seated difference
between two modes of thought; and though it is evident that neither of
these is entirely in the right, yet it being equally evident that
neither is wholly in the wrong, we must endeavour to get down to what
is at the root of each, and avail ourselves of the amount of truth
which exists in either.

Let us remember, then, in the first place, that political institutions
(however the proposition may be at times ignored) are the work of
men--owe their origin and their whole existence to human will. Men did
not wake on a summer morning and find them sprung up. Neither do they
resemble trees, which, once planted, "are aye growing" while men "are
sleeping." In every stage of their existence they are made what they
are by human voluntary agency. Like all things, therefore, which are
made by men, they may be either well or ill made; judgment and skill
may have been exercised in their production, or the reverse of these.