V. And yet again, as the fathers of our commonwealth gave us religion
without compulsion, so they also gave us a State without a king.
There is nothing necessarily wrong or necessarily right in this
particular. Monarchy, aristocracy, republicanism, or pure democracy
cannot claim divine right the one over against the other. Either may
be good, or either may be bad, as the situation and the chances may
be. There has been as much bloody wrong and ruin wrought in the name
of liberty as in the establishment of thrones. There have been as good
and happy governments by kings as by any other methods of human
administration. Civil authority is essential to man, and the power for
it must lie somewhere. The only question is as to the safest
depository of it. The mere form of the government is no great matter.
It has been justly said, "There is hardly a government in the world so
ill designed that in good hands would not do well enough, nor any so
good that in ill hands can do aught great and good." Governments
depend on men, not men on governments. Let men be good, and the
government will not be bad; but if men are bad, no government will
hold for good. If government be bad, good men will cure it; and if the
government be good, bad men will warp and spoil it. Nor is there any
form of government known to man that is not liable to abuse,
prostitution, tyranny, unrighteousness, and oppression.
The best government is that which most efficiently conserves the true
ends of government, be the form what it may. Anything differing from
this is worthless sentimentalism, undeserving of sober regard. And to
meet the true ends of government there must be power to enforce
obedience, and there must be checks upon that power to secure its
subjects against its abuse; for "liberty without obedience is
confusion, and obedience without liberty is slavery." But there may be
liberty under monarchy, as well as reverence and obedience under
democracy, whilst there may be oppression and bloody tyranny under
either.
Amid the varied experiments of the ages the human mind is more and
more settling itself in favor of mixed forms of government, in which
the rights of the people and the limitations of authority are set down
in fixed constitutions, taking the direct rule from the multitude, but
still holding the rulers accountable to the people. Such were more or
less the forms under which the founders of our commonwealth were
tutored.