We need not inquire how many men would be likely to deal thus downrightly with themselves, and thus uprightly with the public. But, however small the number of such may be, yet, the system being so conceived of, there would not only be a selection of agents at the outset, but a powerful subsequent influence, tending to impress these agents with a sense of responsibility. General notions take shape as a kind of implicit demand of each man upon every other, and of the whole community upon every one of its members. They look a subtile exaction out of men's eyes, and suggest penal sentences, or garlands and coronets, by clouding or brightening countenances; and thus it happens, that men who perhaps would initiate no action in personal obedience to ideas, find these blended with all their feeling of others, and with the entire sentiment and passion of their lives. General notions operate so subtly that their effect is appreciated only by the more thoughtful: the thoughtful, however, know them to be the most powerful of all influences, ruling alike the strong and the weak, him that persuades and them that are persuaded; they speak from behind the speaker, and are an aptitude to hear in the ears of them that listen. The mere existence of electricity was not definitely known until of late; but we are now aware, that, with the suspension of its action at any moment during that time when its existence was not suspected, every heart on the globe would have ceased to beat. General notions have a like hidden operation. They build or destroy cities, knit nations into fruitful unity or dissolve them into dust, make or subvert civilizations; they inspire or quell genius, generate arts or palsy invention, breathe health or miasma upon the face of mankind. It was a notion of his position which made Charles First of England, not merely a third-rate sovereign, which he had probably been at the best, but a tyrant, and intolerable: it was a nobler thought that dethroned him. But a sovereign who cannot be dethroned, a sovereign at the polls, will be in his degree a much worse tyrant, if his own conception, and the common conception, of his position be such as to favor the conceit of irresponsibility.

Turn, now, to the notion of proprietary power. Here the sovereignty, whether concentrated or diffused, is held by the possessor,-why, and for what? Why? Because he owns it. For what? For what he pleases. What he will do with his property is his own affair, or is "a question between him and God alone," as the old advocates of "divine right" were wont to say, and as the modern advocates of a "natural right to vote" must also say, if they are enough in earnest to say even so much. We may suppose him expressing his sense of his position somewhat as follows:

"This power which I possess is mine in the same sense with my horse and dog. Nay, it is mine in a more absolute sense, for chattels are held under laws; but here I am above law. Here what I will I do, and it is right because I do it. If I use this property for the public benefit, the public will be so far my debtor; if I use it for no advantage but my own, I still express my will, and, by expressing my will, do all that can be demanded of me. Let the public make it my pleasure to promote the common welfare, and I shall act my pleasure; be it that somewhat else pleases me, I still act my pleasure; and, if any one is dissatisfied, he can digest his dissatisfaction at his leisure."

Perhaps there was never an effrontery to say this expressly, or even to think it definitely; never a Nero, on the throne or at the polls, whose brazenness had attained such a temper. But all that effrontery is in the system, whether or not in any man; and the quality of the system will certainly be more or less reflected in the rulers. Never will the notion of private possession yield the same fruit with that of trust and transmissive action. The same act will differ in significance and effect, accordingly as it is commanded by one or the other conception. The tax-gatherer, and he who is getting in his private dues, are both collecting money; the acts are the same, yet far from being the same. If one pervert to his private use goods which he holds in trust, the disapprobation of the community is unqualified; and accordingly, while he is in a position of trust, there is about him a girdle of public sentiment to brace his integrity; but, if he misuse his private

property, we think him unwise, perhaps culpable, yet, after all, say, "Well, it is his own affair." And so, if one misuse political power which is acknowledged as his own, he is blamed feebly; the responsibility impressed upon him by the general sentiment and gesture of the community is slight in proportion as the sentiment that impresses it is diffident.

Where the sovereignty, whether simple or composite, is thus autocratic (autocracy, literally self-force, defined by Webster as "self-derived power"), it will be esteemed gratuity, grace, favor, to act for the public good. This will determine the manner of approach on the part of those who seek the public good through the action of the ruler. If he is sole autocrat, they will fawn upon and flatter him; tell him he is as a god to his people; tell him how wise, how gracious, how benign, he is; and so seek to win from him as favor that which he should never think of but as duty. If a really great man, he will not encourage this fawning nor endure it, but will demand to be dealt with sincerely: if he is a coxcomb, flattery will be the only crank to set him in motion; and the less he does any kingly duty, the more he will be persuaded that he surpasses all duty and rains sheer grace upon his subjects. Nor will those alone help to inflate his conceit, who seek advantage for themselves, but those no less who are devoted to the weal of the nation; and these must always lavish adulation the more, the less confidence they are able to repose in the prince.

No better instance of this could be found than the relations of Bacon and James First. Bacon was a prodigious flatterer, and was always most fulsome when he had a wise and beneficent measure to propose. He praised Elizabeth, whom he really respected, more after her death than during her life; but he poured upon the "second Solomon "knowing very well, never doubt it, what sort of Solomon he was - such a deluge of adulation as would have gone far to make the king a conceited fool, had not nature been beforehand with the courtier. For it is the misery of such a situation, that the very means taken, and necessary, to secure good government, must needs generate presumption, and, with presumption, ob

stinate folly, in him who rules. But all this the American people suppose themselves to understand quite well.

Suppose, now, that, instead of a single autocrat, there is a voting autocracy; "the natural right to vote" being substituted for "the divine right of kings." Here will be the same influences, the same exactions, and the same results. The sincere and thoughtful voter will repel flattery, and frown upon fawning; he will be amenable to reason, will gladly take counsel, and relish it the more, the freer it is from any sauce of servility; and he will distrust those advisers who disguise his obligations, and present simple duty under some name more pleasing to self-conceit. The ignorant, addle-pated, insolent voter will be moved only by some bribe offered to his vanity, if, indeed, it be not a baser bribe still. But he will be flattered more subtly and more effectually than he could be in person, as Dick or Dennis. He will be addressed as "the people," always fawned upon and puffed by the proxy of "the people."-"The people "- bless them!-always mean rightly. "The people" are so patriotic and large-hearted, so self-forgetful and studious of the best things, that they cannot help meaning rightly. "The people" may be deceived once, but never twice. "The people" may be implicitly trusted. Ah, yes! we can trust" the people: " that happiness is always ours in the darkest days. Is any thing wrong? It is by no fault of " the people." It is so because somebody in place forgot "the people," misunderstood the will of "the people," could not enough trust "the people." -"The people," be it observed, is here simply pluralis majestatis for the said Dick or Dennis, whose vote I would catch, and whom I know, perhaps, to be a worthless fellow altogether; and so year after year the comedy goes on.

Some have wondered that the Romans could so soon learn to flatter Augustus. They had been studying that art in the street and the forum for two centuries. When to become a candidate was to go "a-hand-shaking; " when each candidate walked the streets with a professional nomenclator by his side, to whisper in his ear the names of persons who approached, that he might flatter their egotism by pretending to

know them, as if theirs were faces and names that no wellinformed man could be ignorant of; when they were constantly addressed in the forum, as if their approval were the fountain of honor, and as if no virtue were too great to go down on the knees before them, then the influences were at work, which at once assured destruction to the republic, and prepared a well-taught adulation for Cæsar.

Perhaps the primary classification I have attempted has now been sufficiently explained, and some hint given that it is not without practical importance. Government is autocratic when the sovereign power, whether exercised by one or by many, is held as a property. The sovereignty being thus held by one man, there is an autocracy concentrated, like rock in the boulder; disperse the sovereign power in many, but let it be still held by proprietary title, and there is a disintegrated autocracy, the boulder ground into sand, but of the same substance as before. In the one case, the watchword of its partisans may be, "The divine right of kings;' in the other, "The natural right to vote." The two pretensions are of the same family, par nobile fratrum; and, indeed, their historical relationship is close. The latter is due, in the modern world, to a stratagem of debate,—an attempt to outflank the "divine right," by showing that what was claimed for Charles or James in particular belongs to the whole people. Subsequently this sovereignty of the people, in its turn, was explained to mean the sovereignty of the people in its disunity; that is, the fractional autocracy of the individual.

And this statement of pedigree prepares us to place together the two chief or typical forms of autocratic government. The first is that in which an absolute right to do governing is stated as strictly special or singular; the second is that in which a like right is stated as strictly general. There, sovereign power is made the property of an individual; here, of the individual. All other forms of rule, which repose on the same basis of principle, are intermediate between these two natural boundaries, the limit of possible restriction on the one hand, and of possible extension on the other.

If this classification be new, the distinction upon which it