We may take, as a first instance, the administration of justice;
with the more propriety, since there is no part of public business
in which the mere machinery, the rules and contrivances for conducting
the details of the operation, are of such vital consequence. Yet
even these yield in importance to the qualities of the human agents
employed. Of what efficacy are rules of procedure in securing the ends
of justice, if the moral condition of the people is such that the
witnesses generally lie, and the judges and their subordinates take
bribes? Again, how can institutions provide a good municipal
administration if there exists such indifference to the subject that
those who would administer honestly and capably cannot be induced to
serve, and the duties are left to those who undertake them because
they have some private interest to be promoted? Of what avail is the
most broadly popular representative system if the electors do not care
to choose the best member of parliament, but choose him who will spend
most money to be elected? How can a representative assembly work for
good if its members can be bought, or if their excitability of
temperament, uncorrected by public discipline or private self-control,
makes them incapable of calm deliberation, and they resort to manual
violence on the floor of the House, or shoot at one another with
rifles? How, again, can government, or any joint concern, be carried
on in a tolerable manner by people so envious that, if one among
them seems likely to succeed in anything, those who ought to cooperate
with him form a tacit combination to make him fail? Whenever the
general disposition of the people is such that each individual regards
those only of his interests which are selfish, and does not dwell
on, or concern himself for, his share of the general interest, in such
a state of things good government is impossible.
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