goals which the
age never expected, and so made it ever memorable.

In this manner all the great movements of thought in ancient and modern
times have been nearly connected in time with government by discussion.
Athens, Rome, the Italian republics of the Middle Ages, the COMMUNES
and states-general of feudal Europe, have all had a special and
peculiar quickening influence, which they owed to their freedom, and
which states without that freedom have never communicated. And it has
been at the time of great epochs of thought--at the Peloponnesian war,
at the fall of the Roman Republic, at the Reformation, at the French
Revolution--that such liberty of speaking and thinking have produced
their full effect.

It is on this account that the discussions of savage tribes have
produced so little effect in emancipating those tribes from their
despotic customs. The oratory of the North American Indian--the first
savage whose peculiarities fixed themselves in the public
imagination--has become celebrated, and yet the North American Indians
were scarcely, if at all, better orators than many other savages.
Almost all of the savages who have melted away before the Englishman
were better speakers than he is. But the oratory of the savages has led
to nothing, and was likely to lead to nothing. It is a discussion not
of principles, but of undertakings; its topics are whether expedition A
will answer, and should be undertaken; whether expedition B will not
answer, and should not be undertaken; whether village A is the best
village to plunder, or whether village B is a better. Such discussions
augment the vigour of language, encourage a debating facility, and
develop those gifts of demeanour and of gesture which excite the
confidence of the hearers. But they do not excite the speculative
intellect, do not lead men to argue speculative doctrines, or to
question ancient principles. They, in some material respects, improve
the sheep within the fold; but they do not help them or incline them to
leap out of the fold.

The next question, therefore, is, Why did discussions in some cases
relate to prolific ideas, and why did discussions in other cases relate
only to isolated transactions? The reply which history suggests is very
clear and very remarkable. Some races of men at our earliest knowledge
of them have already acquired the basis of a free constitution; they
have already the rudiments of a complex polity--a monarch, a senate,
and a gene