The nation as a whole, and every
individual composing it, are without any potential voice in their
own destiny. They exercise no will in respect to their collective
interests. All is decided for them by a will not their own, which it
is legally a crime for them to disobey.
What sort of human beings can be formed under such a regimen? What
development can either their thinking or their active faculties attain
under it? On matters of pure theory they might perhaps be allowed to
speculate, so long as their speculations either did not approach
politics, or had not the remotest connection with its practice. On
practical affairs they could at most be only suffered to suggest;
and even under the most moderate of despots, none but persons of
already admitted or reputed superiority could hope that their
suggestions would be known to, much less regarded by, those who had
the management of affairs. A person must have a very unusual taste for
intellectual exercise in and for itself, who will put himself to the
trouble of thought when it is to have no outward effect, or qualify
himself for functions which he has no chance of being allowed to
exercise. The only sufficient incitement to mental exertion, in any
but a few minds in a generation, is the prospect of some practical use
to be made of its results. It does not follow that the nation will
be wholly destitute of intellectual power.
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