s no government to the multitude. Brutus died
for a republic, but a republic of Patricians! What form of government is
then the best? All dispute, the wisest cannot agree. The many still say
'a Republic;' yet, as you yourself will allow, Prussia, the Despotism,
does all that Republics do. Yes, but a good despot is a lucky accident;
true, but a just and benevolent Republic is as yet a monster equally
short-lived. When the People have no other tyrant, their own public
opinion becomes one. No secret espionage is more intolerable to a free
spirit than the broad glare of the American eye.

"A rural republic is but a patriarchal tribe--no emulation, no glory;
peace and stagnation. What Englishman, what Frenchman, would wish to be
a Swiss? A commercial republic is but an admirable machine for making
money. Is man created for nothing nobler than freighting ships and
speculating on silk and sugar? In fact, there is no certain goal in
legislation; we go on colonizing Utopia, and fighting phantoms in the
clouds. Let us content ourselves with injuring no man, and doing good
only in our own little sphere. Let us leave States and senates to fill
the sieve of the Danaides, and roll up the stone of Sisyphus."

"My dear friend," said De Montaigne, "you have certainly made the most
of an argument, which, if granted, would consign government to fools
and knaves, and plunge the communities of mankind into the Slough of
Despond. But a very commonplace view of the question might suffice to
shake your system. Is life, mere animal life, on the whole, a curse or a
blessing?"

"The generality of men in all countries," answered Maltravers, "enjoy
existence, and apprehend death; were it otherwise, the world had been
made by a Fiend, and not a God!"

"Well, then, observe how the progress of society cheats the grave! In
great cities, where the effect of civilization must be the most visible,
the diminution of mortality in a corresponding ratio with the increase
of civilization is most remarkable. In Berlin, from the year 1747 to
1755, the annual mortality was as one to twenty-eight; but from 1816 to
1822, it was as one to thirty-four! You ask what England has gained by
her progress in the arts? I will answer you by her bills of mortality.
In London, Birmingham, and Liverpool, deaths have decreased in less than
a century from one to twenty, to one to forty (precisely one-half!).
Again, whenever a community--nay, a single city, decreases in
civili