The best prospect
of improvement for a people thus composed lies in the existence of a
constitutionally unlimited, or at least a practically preponderant,
authority in the chief ruler of the dominant class. He alone has by
his position an interest in raising and improving the mass of whom
he is not jealous, as a counterpoise to his associates of whom he
is. And if fortunate circumstances place beside him, not as
controllers but as subordinates, a body representative of the superior
caste, which by its objections and questionings, and by its occasional
outbreaks of spirit, keeps alive habits of collective resistance,
and may admit of being, in time and by degrees, expanded into a really
national representation (which is in substance the history of the
English Parliament), the nation has then the most favourable prospects
of improvement which can well occur to a community thus
circumstanced and constituted.
Among the tendencies which, without absolutely rendering a people
unfit for representative government, seriously incapacitate them
from reaping the full benefit of it, one deserves particular notice.
There are two states of the inclinations, intrinsically very
different, but which have something in common, by virtue of which they
often coincide in the direction they give to the efforts of
individuals and of nations: one is, the desire to exercise power
over others; the other is disinclination to have power exercised
over themselves.
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