THE MARKS OF A GOOD GOVERNMENT
The question "What absolutely is the best government?" is unanswerable
as well as indeterminate; or rather, there are as many good answers as
there are possible combinations in the absolute and relative situations
of all nations.
But if it is asked by what sign we may know that a given people is well
or ill governed, that is another matter, and the question, being one of
fact, admits of an answer.
It is not, however, answered, because every-one wants to answer it in
his own way. Subjects extol public tranquillity, citizens individual
liberty; the one class prefers security of possessions, the other that
of person; the one regards as the best government that which is most
severe, the other maintains that the mildest is the best; the one wants
crimes punished, the other wants them prevented; the one wants the
State to be feared by its neighbours, the other prefers that it should
be ignored; the one is content if money circulates, the other demands
that the people shall have bread. Even if an agreement were come to
on these and similar points, should we have got any further? As moral
qualities do not admit of exact measurement, agreement about the mark
does not mean agreement about the valuation.
For my part, I am continually astonished that a mark so simple is not
recognised, or that men are of so bad faith as not to admit it. What
is the end of political association? The preservation and prosperity
of its members. And what is the surest mark of their preservation and
prosperity? Their numbers and population. Seek then nowhere else this
mark that is in dispute. The rest being equal, the government under
which, without external aids, without naturalisation or colonies, the
citizens increase and multiply most, is beyond question the best.
The government under which a people wanes and diminishes is worst.
Calculators, it is left for you to count, to measure, to compare.[1]
[1] On the same principle it should be judged what centuries deserve
the preference for human prosperity. Those in which letters and arts
have flourished have been too much admired, because the hidden object
of their culture has not been fathomed, and their fatal effects not
taken into account. "Idque apud imperitos humanitas vocabatur, cum
pars servitutis esset." ["Fools called 'humanity' what was a part of
slavery," Tacitus, _Agricola_, 31.] Shall we never see in the maxims
books lay down the vulgar interest that makes their writers speak?
No, whatever they may say, when, despite its renown, a country is
depopulated, it is not true that all is well, and it is not enough that
a poet should have an income of 100,000 francs to make his age the
best of all. Less attention should be paid to the apparent repose and
tranquillity of the rulers than to the well-being of their nations as
wholes, and above all of the most numerous States. A hail-storm lays
several cantons waste, but it rarely makes a famine. Outbreaks and
civil wars give rulers rude shocks, but they are not the real ills of
peoples, who may even get a respite, while there is a dispute as to who
shall tyrannise over them. Their true prosperity and calamities come
from their permanent condition: it is when the whole remains crushed
beneath the yoke, that decay sets in, and that the rulers destroy
them at will, and "ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant" ["Where
they create solitude, they call it peace," Tacitus, _Agricola_, 31.]
When the bickerings of the great disturbed the kingdom of France, and
the Coadjutor of Paris took a dagger in his pocket to the Parliament,
these things did not prevent the people of France from prospering and
multiplying in dignity, ease and freedom. Long ago Greece flourished
in the midst of the most savage wars; blood ran in torrents, and yet
the whole country was covered with inhabitants. It appeared, says
Macchiavelli, that in the midst of murder, proscription and civil war,
our republic only throve: the virtue, morality and independence of the
citizens did more to strengthen it than all their dissensions had done
to enfeeble it A little disturbance gives the soul elasticity; what
makes the race truly prosperous is not so much peace as liberty.