it is much better qualified judiciously
to discriminate the characters of the men it employs. If any deny what I
advance, they have certainly never seen a democratic government, or have
formed their opinion upon very partial evidence. It is true that
even when local circumstances and the disposition of the people allow
democratic institutions to subsist, they never display a regular
and methodical system of government. Democratic liberty is far from
accomplishing all the projects it undertakes, with the skill of an
adroit despotism. It frequently abandons them before they have borne
their fruits, or risks them when the consequences may prove dangerous;
but in the end it produces more than any absolute government, and if it
do fewer things well, it does a greater number of things. Under its
sway the transactions of the public administration are not nearly so
important as what is done by private exertion. Democracy does not confer
the most skilful kind of government upon the people, but it produces
that which the most skilful governments are frequently unable to awaken,
namely, an all-pervading and restless activity, a superabundant force,
and an energy which is inseparable from it, and which may, under
favorable circumstances, beget the most amazing benefits. These are the
true advantages of democracy.

In the present age, when the destinies of Christendom seem to be in
suspense, some hasten to assail democracy as its foe whilst it is yet in
its early growth; and others are ready with their vows of adoration for
this new deity which is springing forth from chaos: but both parties are
very imperfectly acquainted with the object of their hatred or of their
desires; they strike in the dark, and distribute their blows by mere
chance.

We must first understand what the purport of society and the aim of
government is held to be. If it be your intention to confer a certain
elevation upon the human mind, and to teach it to regard the things of
this world with generous feelings, to inspire men with a scorn of mere
temporal advantage, to give birth to living convictions, and to keep
alive the spirit of honorable devotedness; if you hold it to be a good
thing to refine the habits, to embellish the manners, to cultivate the
arts of a nation, and to promote the love of poetry, of beauty, and of
renown; if you would constitute a people not unfitted to act with power
upon all other nations, nor unprepared for those high enterprises w