community of their individual freedom of action, would fail to enforce
the first lesson which the pupils, in this stage of their progress,
require. Accordingly, the civilisation of such tribes, when not the
result of juxtaposition with others already civilised, is almost
always the work of an absolute ruler, deriving his power either from
religion or military prowess; very often from foreign arms.

  Again, uncivilised races, and the bravest and most energetic still
more than the rest, are averse to continuous labour of an unexciting
kind. Yet all real civilisation is at this price; without such labour,
neither can the mind be disciplined into the habits required by
civilised society, nor the material world prepared to receive it.
There needs a rare concurrence of circumstances, and for that reason
often a vast length of time, to reconcile such a people to industry,
unless they are for a while compelled to it. Hence even personal
slavery, by giving a commencement to industrial life, and enforcing it
as the exclusive occupation of the most numerous portion of the
community, may accelerate the transition to a better freedom than that
of fighting and rapine. It is almost needless to say that this
excuse for slavery is only available in a very early state of society.
A civilised people have far other means of imparting civilisation to
those under their influence; and slavery is, in all its details, so
repugnant to that government of law, which is the foundation of all
modern life, and so corrupting to the master-class when they have once
come under civilised influences, that its adoption under any
circumstances whatever in modern society is a relapse into worse
than barbarism.

  At some period, however, of their history, almost every people,
now civilised, have consisted, in majority, of slaves. A people in
that condition require to raise them out of it a very different polity
from a nation of savages. If they are energetic by nature, and
especially if there be associated with them in. the same community
an industrious class who are neither slaves nor slave-owners (as was
the case in Greece), they need, probably, no more to ensure their
improvement than to make them free: when freed, they may often be fit,
like Roman freedmen, to be admitted at once to the full rights of
citizenship. This, however, is not the normal condition of slavery,
and is generally a sign that it is becoming obsolete. A slave,
properly so called, is a being who has not learnt to help himself.
He is, no doubt, one step in advance of a savage. He has not the first
lesson of political society still to acquire. He has learnt to obey.
But what he obeys is only a direct command. It is the characteristic
of born slaves to be incapable of conforming their conduct to a
rule, or law. They can only do what they are ordered, and only when
they are ordered to do it. If a man whom they fear is standing over
them and threatening them with punishment, they obey; but when his
back is turned, the work remains undone. The motive determining them
must appeal not to their interests, but to their instincts;
immediate hope or immediate terror. A despotism, which may tame the
savage, will, in so far as it is a despotism, only confirm the
slaves in their incapacities. Yet a government under their own control
would be entirely unmanageable by them. Their improvement cannot
come from themselves, but must be superinduced from without. The
step which they have to take, and their only path to improvement, is
to be raised from a government of will to one of law. They have to
be taught self-government, and this, in its initial stage, means the
capacity to act on general instructions. What they require is not a
government of force, but one of guidance. Being, however, in too low a
state to yield to the guidance of any but those to whom they look up
as the possessors of force, the sort of government fittest for them is
one which possesses force, but seldom uses it: a parental despotism or
aristocracy, resembling the St. Simonian form of Socialism;
maintaining a general superintendence over all the operations of
society, so as to keep before each the sense of a present force
sufficient to compel his obedience to the rule laid down, but which,
owing to the impossibility of descending to regulate all the minutae
of industry and life, necessarily leaves and induces individuals to do
much of themselves. This, which may be termed the government of
leading-strings, seems to be the one required to carry such a people
the most rapidly through the next necessary step in social progress.
Such appears to have been the idea of the government of the Incas of
Peru; and such was that of the Jesuits of Paraguay. I need scarcely
remark that leading-strings are only admissible as a means of
gradually training the people to walk alone.

  It would be out of place to carry the illustration further. To
attempt to investigate what kind of government is suited to every
known state of society would be to compose a treatise, not on
representative government, but on political science at large. For
our more limited purpose we borrow from political philosophy only
its general principles. To determine the form of government most
suited to any particular people, we must be able, among the defects
and shortcomings which belong to that people, to distinguish those
that are the immediate impediment to progress; to discover what it
is which (as it were) stops the way. The best government for them is
the one which tends most to give them that for want of which they
cannot advance, or advance only in a lame and lopsided manner. We must
not, however, forget the reservation necessary in all things which
have for their object improvement, or Progress; namely, that in
seeking the good which is needed, no damage, or as little as possible,
be done to that already possessed. A people of savages should be
taught obedience but not in such a manner as to convert them into a
people of slaves. And (to give the observation a higher generality)
the form of government which is most effectual for carrying a people
through the next stage of progress will still be very improper for
them if it does this in such a manner as to obstruct, or positively
unfit them for, the step next beyond. Such cases are frequent, and are
among the most melancholy facts in history. The Egyptian hierarchy,
the paternal despotism of China, were very fit instruments for