The state of different communities, in point of
culture and development, ranges downwards to a condition very little
above the highest of the beasts. The upward range, too, is
considerable, and the future possible extension vastly greater. A
community can only be developed out of one of these states into a
higher by a concourse of influences, among the principal of which is
the government to which they are subject. In all states of human
improvement ever yet attained, the nature and degree of authority
exercised over individuals, the distribution of power, and the
conditions of command and obedience, are the most powerful of the
influences, except their religious belief, which make them what they
are, and enable them to become what they can be. They may be stopped
short at any point in their progress by defective adaptation of
their government to that particular stage of advancement. And the
one indispensable merit of a government, in favour of which it may
be forgiven almost any amount of other demerit compatible with
progress, is that its operation on the people is favourable, or not
unfavourable, to the next step which it is necessary for them to take,
in order to raise themselves to a higher level.
Thus (to repeat a former example), a people in a state of savage
independence, in which every one lives for himself, exempt, unless
by fits, from any external control, is practically incapable of making
any progress in civilisation until it has learnt to obey.
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