ill more
of the great and complex public administrations. People are taught, and
I suppose believe, that the "heart of man is deceitful above all things,
and desperately wicked;" and yet, strangely enough, believing this, they
place implicit trust in those they appoint to this or that function. I
do not think so ill of human nature; but, on the other hand, I do not
think so well of human nature as to believe it will go straight without
being watched.

You hinted that while Americans do not assert their own individualities
sufficiently in small matters, they, reciprocally, do not sufficiently
respect the individualities of others.

Did I? Here, then, comes another of the inconveniences of interviewing.
I should have kept this opinion to myself if you had asked me no
questions; and now I must either say what I do not think, which I
cannot, or I must refuse to answer, which, perhaps, will be taken to
mean more than I intend, or I must specify, at the risk of giving
offence. As the least evil, I suppose I must do the last. The trait I
refer to comes out in various ways, small and great. It is shown by the
disrespectful manner in which individuals are dealt with in your
journals--the placarding of public men in sensational headings, the
dragging of private people and their affairs into print. There seems to
be a notion that the public have a right to intrude on private life as
far as they like; and this I take to be a kind of moral trespassing.
Then, in a larger way, the trait is seen in this damaging of private
property by your elevated railways without making compensation; and it
is again seen in the doings of railway autocrats, not only when
overriding the rights of shareholders, but in dominating over courts of
justice and State governments. The fact is that free institutions can be
properly worked only by men, each of whom is jealous of his own rights,
and also sympathetically jealous of the rights of others--who will
neither himself aggress on his neighbours in small things or great, nor
tolerate aggression on them by others. The Republican form of government
is the highest form of government; but because of this it requires the
highest type of human nature--a type nowhere at present existing. We
have not grown up to it; nor have you.

But we thought, Mr. Spencer, you were in favour of free government in
the sense of relaxed restraints, and letting men and things very much
alone, or what is called _laissez faire_?