The regulations which restricted to fixed processes all the
leading branches of French manufactures were the work of the great
Colbert.
Very different is the state of the human faculties where a human
being feels himself under no other external restraint than the
necessities of nature, or mandates of society which he has his share
in imposing, and which it is open to him, if he thinks them wrong,
publicly to dissent from, and exert himself actively to get altered.
No doubt, under a government partially popular, this freedom may be
exercised even by those who are not partakers in the full privileges
of citizenship. But it is a great additional stimulus to any one's
self-help and self-reliance when he starts from even ground, and has
not to feel that his success depends on the impression he can make
upon the sentiments and dispositions of a body of whom he is not
one. It is a great discouragement to an individual, and a still
greater one to a class, to be left out of the constitution; to be
reduced to plead from outside the door to the arbiters of their
destiny, not taken into consultation within. The maximum of the
invigorating effect of freedom upon the character is only obtained
when the person acted on either is, or is looking forward to becoming,
a citizen as fully privileged as any other.
What is still more important than even this matter of feeling is the
practical discipline which the character obtains from the occasional
demand made upon the citizens to exercise, for a time and in their
turn, some social function.
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