Anglo-Saxons. Hence their need of a master, and the feeling of stability
realized among them only under legitimacy and despotism. Shallow
reasoners argue from the mere acknowledgment of this state of things
that it is an ultimate public blessing when the man appears with wit and
will enough to regulate and keep from chaos a society thus destitute of
political training. But those who look deeper know that this political
inefficiency is but the external manifestation or the latent cause of
more serious defects: by impeding healthful development in one way, it
occasions a morbid development in another. If citizenship in its most
free and active privilege were enjoyed, there would be less devotion to
amusement, a more virile national character, and the sanctities of
life would have observance. Public spirit and a political career are
incentives to manly ambition,--to an employment of mind and feeling
that wins men from trifling pursuits and vain diversion; they are the
national basis of private usefulness; to thwart them is to condemn
humanity to perpetual childhood,--to render members of a state machines.

The social evils and kinds of crime in France are referable in no
small degree to the absence of great motives,--the limited spheres and
hopeless routine involved in arbitrary government, unsustained by any
elevated sentiment. Such a rule makes literature servile, enterprise
mercenary, and manners profligate: all history proves this. It is not,
therefore, rational to infer, from the apparent want of ability in the
nation to take care of its own affairs, that a military despotism is
justifiable; when the truth is equally demonstrated, that such a sway,
by indefinitely postponing the chance to acquire the requisite training,
keeps down and throws back the national impulse and destiny. The man who
thus abuses power is none the less a traitor and a parricide.