In the ancient world,
though there might be, and often was, great individual or local
independence, there could be nothing like a regulated popular
government beyond the bounds of a single city-community; because there
did not exist the physical conditions for the formation and
propagation of a public opinion, except among those who could be
brought together to discuss public matters in the same agora. This
obstacle is generally thought to have ceased by the adoption of the
representative system. But to surmount it completely, required the
press, and even the newspaper press, the real equivalent, though not
in all respects an adequate one, of the Pnyx and the Forum. There have
been states of society in which even a monarchy of any great
territorial extent could not subsist, but unavoidably broke up into
petty principalities, either mutually independent, or held together by
a loose tie like the feudal: because the machinery of authority was
not perfect enough to carry orders into effect at a great distance
from the person of the ruler. He depended mainly upon voluntary
fidelity for the obedience even of his army, nor did there exist the
means of making the people pay an amount of taxes sufficient for
keeping up the force necessary to compel obedience throughout a
large territory. In these and all similar cases, it must be understood
that the amount of the hindrance may be either greater or less.
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