Again, a
people may be unwilling or unable to fulfil the duties which a
particular form of government requires of them. A rude people,
though in some degree alive to the benefits of civilised society,
may be unable to practise the forbearance which it demands: their
passions may be too violent, or their personal pride too exacting,
to forego private conflict, and leave to the laws the avenging of
their real or supposed wrongs. In such a case, a civilised government,
to be really advantageous to them, will require to be in a
considerable degree despotic: to be one over which they do not
themselves exercise control, and which imposes a great amount of
forcible restraint upon their actions.
Again, a people must be considered unfit for more than a limited and
qualified freedom, who will not co-operate actively with the law and
the public authorities in the repression of evil-doers. A people who
are more disposed to shelter a criminal than to apprehend him; who,
like the Hindoos, will perjure themselves to screen the man who has
robbed them, rather than take trouble or expose themselves to
vindictiveness by giving evidence against him; who, like some
nations of Europe down to a recent date, if a man poniards another
in the public street, pass by on the other side, because it is the
business of the police to look to the matter, and it is safer not to
interfere in what does not concern them; a people who are revolted
by an execution, but not shocked at an assassination- require that
the public authorities should be armed with much sterner powers of
repression than elsewhere, since the first indispensable requisites of
civilised life have nothing else to rest on.
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