[17]. Reeves’s translation, London, 1838, vol. i. p. 97, note.

The Italics are my own; but it will be seen that he uses a phrase almost identical with Mr. Parkman’s, and that he uses it to show that there is something to be looked at beyond good laws,—namely, the beneficial effect of self-government. In another place he comes back to the subject again:—

“It is incontestable that the people frequently conducts public business very ill; but it is impossible that the lower order should take a part in public business without extending the circle of their ideas, and without quitting the ordinary routine of their mental acquirements; the humblest individual who is called upon to co-operate in the government of society acquires a certain degree of self-respect; and, as he possesses authority, he can command the services of minds much more enlightened than his own. He is canvassed by a multitude of applicants, who seek to deceive him in a thousand different ways, but who instruct him by their deceit.... Democracy does not confer the most skilful kind of government upon the people; but it produces that which the most skilful governments are frequently unable to awaken, namely, an all-pervading and restless activity, a superabundant force, and an energy which is inseparable from it, and which may, under favorable circumstances, beget the most amazing benefits. These are the true advantages of democracy.”[[18]]

[18]. Ibid., vol. ii. pp. 74, 75.

These passages and others like them are worth careful study. They clearly point out the two different standards by which we may criticise all political systems. One class of thinkers, of whom Froude is the most conspicuous, holds that the “good of the people” means good laws and good administration, and that, if these are only provided, it makes no sort of difference whether they themselves make the laws, or whether some Cæsar or Louis Napoleon provides them. All the traditions of the early and later Federalists point this way. But it has always seemed to me a theory of government essentially incompatible with American institutions. If we could once get our people saturated with it, they would soon be at the mercy of some Louis Napoleon of their own.

When President Lincoln claimed, following Theodore Parker, that ours was not merely a government for the people, but of the people and by the people as well, he recognized the other side of the matter,—that it is not only important what laws we have, but who makes the laws; and that “the end of a good government is to insure the welfare of a people,” in this far wider sense. That advantage which the French writer admits in democracy, that it develops force, energy, and self-respect, is as essentially a part of “the good of the governed,” as is any perfection in the details of government. And it is precisely these advantages which we expect that women, sooner or later, are to share. For them, as for men, “the good of the governed” is not genuine unless it is that kind of good which belongs to the self-governed.

LXXVIII.
RULING AT SECOND-HAND.

“Women ruled all; and ministers of state

Were at the doors of women forced to wait,—

Women, who’ve oft as sovereigns graced the land,