What is wanted is, the means of
making ignorance aware of itself, and able to profit by knowledge;
accustoming minds which know only routine to act upon, and feel the
value of principles: teaching them to compare different modes of
action, and learn, by the use of their reason, to distinguish the
best. When we desire to have a good school, we do not eliminate the
teacher. The old remark, "as the schoolmaster is, so will be the
school," is as true of the indirect schooling of grown people by
public business as of the schooling of youth in academies and
colleges. A government which attempts to do everything is aptly
compared by M. Charles de Remusat to a schoolmaster who does all the
pupils' tasks for them; he may be very popular with the pupils, but he
will teach them little. A government, on the other hand, which neither
does anything itself that can possibly be done by any one else, nor
shows any one else how to do anything, is like a school in which there
is no schoolmaster, but only pupil teachers who have never
themselves been taught.
Chapter 16
Of Nationality, as connected with Representative Government.
A PORTION of mankind may be said to constitute a Nationality if they
are united among themselves by common sympathies which do not exist
between them and any others- which make them co-operate with each
other more willingly than with other people, desire to be under the
same government, and desire that it should be government by themselves
or a portion of themselves exclusively.
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