government, if real, would most likely have prevented them from
entering upon. There are parts of Europe where the same work is still
to be done, and no prospect of its being done by any other means.
Nothing short of despotic rule or a general massacre could effect the
emancipation of the serfs in the Russian Empire.

The same passages of history forcibly illustrate another mode in which
unlimited monarchy overcomes obstacles to the progress of civilization
which representative government would have had a decided tendency to
aggravate. One of the strongest hindrances to improvement, up to a
rather advanced stage, is an inveterate spirit of locality. Portions
of mankind, in many other respects capable of, and prepared for
freedom, may be unqualified for amalgamating into even the smallest
nation. Not only may jealousies and antipathies repel them from one
another, and bar all possibility of voluntary union, but they may not
yet have acquired any of the feelings or habits which would make the
union real, supposing it to be nominally accomplished. They may, like
the citizens of an ancient community, or those of an Asiatic village,
have had considerable practice in exercising their faculties on
village or town interests, and have even realized a tolerably
effective popular government on that restricted scale, and may yet
have but slender sympathies with any thing beyond, and no habit or
capacity of dealing with interests common to many such communities. I
am not aware that history furnishes any example in which a number of
these political atoms or corpuscles have coalesced into a body, and
learned to feel themselves one people, except through previous
subjection to a central authority common to all. [2] It is through
the habit of deferring to that authority, entering into its plans and
subserving its purposes, that a people such as we have supposed
receive into their minds the conception of large interests common to a