These deplorable states
of feeling, in any people who have emerged from savage life, are, no
doubt, usually the consequence of previous bad government, which has
taught them to regard the law as made for other ends than their
good, and its administrators as worse enemies than those who openly
violate it. But however little blame may be due to those in whom these
mental habits have grown up, and however the habits may be
ultimately conquerable by better government, yet while they exist a
people so disposed cannot be governed with as little power exercised
over them as a people whose sympathies are on the side of the law, and
who are willing to give active assistance in its enforcement. Again,
representative institutions are of little value, and may be a mere
instrument of tyranny or intrigue, when the generality of electors are
not sufficiently interested in their own government to give their
vote, or, if they vote at all, do not bestow their suffrages on public
grounds, but sell them for money, or vote at the beck of some one
who has control over them, or whom for private reasons they desire
to propitiate. Popular election thus practised, instead of a
security against misgovernment, is but an additional wheel in its
machinery.
Besides these moral hindrances, mechanical difficulties are often an
insuperable impediment to forms of government.
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