s, almost
imperceptibly different, but yet different; they speak a varying
accent; they use a few peculiar words; tradition says that their faith
is dubious. And if the next parish is a little suspected, the next
county is much more suspected. Here is a definite beginning of new
maxims, new thoughts, new ways: the immemorial boundary mark begins in
feeling a strange world. And if the next county is dubious, a remote
county is untrustworthy. "Vagrants come from thence," men know, and
they know nothing else. The inhabitants of the north speak a dialect
different from the dialect of the south: they have other laws, another
aristocracy, another life. In ages when distant territories are blanks
in the mind, when neighbourhood is a sentiment, when locality is a
passion, concerted co-operation between remote regions is impossible
even on trivial matters. Neither would rely enough upon the good faith,
good sense, and good judgment of the other. Neither could enough
calculate on the other.

And if such co-operation is not to be expected in trivial matters, it
is not to be thought of in the most vital matter of government--the
choice of the executive ruler. To fancy that Northumberland in the
thirteenth century would have consented to ally itself with
Somersetshire for the choice of a chief magistrate is absurd; it would
scarcely have allied itself to choose a hangman. Even now, if it were
palpably explained, neither district would like it. But no one says at
a county election, "The object of this present meeting is to choose our
delegate to what the Americans call the 'Electoral College,' to the
assembly which names our first magistrate--our substitute for their
President. Representatives from this county will meet representatives
from other counties, from cities and boroughs, and proceed to choose
our rulers." Such bald exposition would have been impossible in old
times; it would be considered queer, eccentric, if it were used now.
Happily, the process of election is so indirect and hidden, and the
introduction of that process was so gradual and latent, that we
scarcely perceive the immense political trust we repose in each other.
The best mercantile credit seems to those who give it, natural, simple,
obvious; they do not argue about it, or think about it. The best
political credit is analogous; we trust our countrymen without
remembering that we trust them.

A second and very rare condition of an elective government is a CAL