tle of both. He was one who thought that the
tendency of all European States is towards Democracy; but he by no means
looked upon Democracy as a panacea for all legislative evils. He thought
that, while a writer should be in advance of his time, a statesman
should content himself with marching by its side; that a nation could
not be ripened, like an exotic, by artificial means; that it must
be developed only by natural influences. He believed that forms of
government are never universal in their effects. Thus, De Montaigne
conceived that we were wrong in attaching more importance to legislative
than to social reforms. He considered, for instance, that the surest
sign of our progressive civilization is in our growing distaste to
capital punishments. He believed, not in the ultimate _perfection_ of
mankind, but in their progressive _perfectibility_. He thought that
improvement was indefinite; but he did not place its advance more under
Republican than under Monarchical forms. "Provided," he was wont to say,
"all our checks to power are of the right kind, it matters little to
what hands the power itself is confided."

"AEgina and Athens," said he, "were republics--commercial and
maritime--placed under the same sky, surrounded by the same neighbours,
and rent by the same struggles between Oligarchy and Democracy. Yet,
while one left the world an immortal heirloom of genius, where are the
poets, the philosophers, the statesmen of the other? Arrian tells us of
republics in India, still supposed to exist by modern investigators;
but they are not more productive of liberty of thought, or ferment of
intellect, than the principalities. In Italy there were commonwealths
as liberal as the Republic of Florence; but they did not produce a
Machiavelli or a Dante. What daring thought, what gigantic speculation,
what democracy of wisdom and genius, have sprung up amongst the
despotisms of Germany! You cannot educate two individuals so as to
produce the same results from both; you cannot, by similar constitutions
(which are the education of nations) produce the same results from
different communities. The proper object of statesmen should be to give
every facility to the people to develop themselves, and every facility
to philosophy to dispute and discuss as to the ultimate objects to be
obtained. But you cannot, as a practical legislator, place your country
under a melon-frame: it must grow of its own accord."

I do not say whether or