ive,
judicial, and executive, though they are usually named in another
order as the executive, legislative, and judicial.

The most efficient form of government for good or evil, and the
quickest to act, is undoubtedly that in which all of these powers are
united in a single individual. If that individual were always strong,
yet peace-loving, self-controlled, sagacious and exclusively devoted
to the welfare of his subjects, that form of government would perhaps
secure them justice most surely and speedily. Such men, however, are
rare and such governments have been found to be invariably and almost
inevitably arbitrary in their dealings with their subjects, and in the
plenitude of their power to become oppressive. While they may
effectually protect their subjects from foreign aggression and
domestic anarchy, their tendency is to impose burdens and restrict
individual liberty more than necessary, and to disregard the innate
desire of men for liberty or at least for equality of restraint. This
form of government has already largely disappeared and is further
disappearing, though it may again be resorted to for the restoration
of order, should the present forms of government fail to prevent
violence and preserve the peace.

But other forms of government have not been and are not yet wholly
free from the same objectionable tendency. The vesting of all these
governmental powers in a group or class of persons instead of one
person has been followed by the same results. Aristocracies or
oligarchies have the same tendency and even in a greater degree. They
have proved even more selfish and tyrannical than the single ruler.
They, like all crowds, are less sensitive in conscience, less moved by
appeals to reason, than is the single individual. They offend more the
sentiment of equality. The French Revolution was not so much against
the king as against the nobility, who with their oppressive feudal
exemptions had excited the resentment of the people at large. It was
not till after he had cast in his lot with the emigres that the king
was deposed and guillotined.

Nor have pure democracies, in the few instances where they have
undertaken to exercise directly all the powers of government, showed
less tendency to be arbitrary and inconsiderate of individual freedom
and desires. The nearest approach to such a government was that of
ancient Athens where the populace sent into exile, practically without
trial, Aristides, called the J