Nations are not
primarily ruled by laws; less by violence. Whatever original energy
may be supposed either in force or regulation, the operation of both
is, in truth, merely instrumental. Nations are governed by the same
methods, and on the same principles, by which an individual without
authority is often able to govern those who are his equals or his
superiors, by a knowledge of their temper, and by a judicious
management of it; I mean, when public affairs are steadily and
quietly conducted: not when Government is nothing but a continued
scuffle between the magistrate and the multitude, in which sometimes
the one and sometimes the other is uppermost--in which they
alternately yield and prevail, in a series of contemptible victories
and scandalous submissions. The temper of the people amongst whom
he presides ought therefore to be the first study of a statesman.
And the knowledge of this temper it is by no means impossible for
him to attain, if he has not an interest in being ignorant of what
it is his duty to learn.
To complain of the age we live in, to murmur at the present
possessors of power, to lament the past, to conceive extravagant
hopes of the future, are the common dispositions of the greater part
of mankind--indeed, the necessary effects of the ignorance and
levity of the vulgar.
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