es, priests, millionaires, and scholars, and
given to artisans and peasants, these latter may be trusted to do only
right and justice, and never to abuse the power; that they will repress
all excess in others, and commit none themselves. They will commit
abuse, if they can and dare, just as others have done. The reason for
the excesses of the old governing classes lies in the vices and
passions of human nature--cupidity, lust, vindictiveness, ambition, and
vanity. These vices are confined to no nation, class, or age. They
appear in the church, the academy, the workshop, and the hovel, as
well as in the army or the palace. They have appeared in autocracies,
aristocracies, theocracies, democracies, and ochlocracies, all alike.
The only thing which has ever restrained these vices of human nature in
those who had political power is law sustained by impersonal
institutions. If political power be given to the masses who have not
hitherto had it, nothing will stop them from abusing it but laws and
institutions. To say that a popular government cannot be paternal is to
give it a charter that it can do no wrong. The trouble is that a
democratic government is in greater danger than any other of becoming
paternal, for it is sure of itself, and ready to undertake anything,
and its power is excessive and pitiless against dissentients.

What history shows is, that rights are safe only when guaranteed
against all arbitrary power, and all class and personal interest.
Around an autocrat there has grown up an oligarchy of priests and
soldiers. In time a class of nobles has been developed, who have broken
into the oligarchy and made an aristocracy. Later the _demos_, rising
into an independent development, has assumed power and made a
democracy. Then the mob of a capital city has overwhelmed the democracy
in an ochlocracy. Then the "idol of the people," or the military
"savior of society," or both in one, has made himself autocrat, and
the same old vicious round has recommenced. Where in all this is
liberty? There has been no liberty at all, save where a state has known
how to break out, once for all, from this delusive round; to set
barriers to selfishness, cupidity, envy, and lust, in _all_ classes,
from highest to lowest, by laws and institutions; and to create great
organs of civil life which can eliminate, as far as possible, arbitrary
and personal elements from the adjustment of interests and the
definition of rights. Liberty is an