s mostly
scattered; and where population is sparse, discussion is difficult. But
in a country very large, as we reckon in Europe, a people really
intelligent, really educated, really comfortable, would soon form a
good opinion. No one can doubt that the New England States, if they
were a separate community, would have an education, a political
capacity, and an intelligence such as the numerical majority of no
people, equally numerous, has ever possessed. In a State of this sort,
where all the community is fit to choose a sufficient legislature, it
is possible, it is almost easy, to create that legislature. If the New
England States possessed a Cabinet government as a separate nation,
they would be as renowned in the world for political sagacity as they
now are for diffused happiness.

The structure of these communities is indeed based on the principle of
equality, and it is impossible that ANY such community can wholly
satisfy the severe requirements of a political theorist. In every old
community its primitive and guiding assumption is at war with truth. By
its theory all people are entitled to the same political power, and
they can only be so entitled on the ground that in politics they are
equally wise. But at the outset of an agricultural colony this
postulate is as near the truth as politics want. There are in such
communities no large properties, no great capitals, no refined
classes--every one is comfortable and homely, and no one is at all
more. Equality is not artificially established in a new colony; it
establishes itself. There is a story that among the first settlers in
Western Australia, some, who were rich, took out labourers at their own
expense, and also carriages to ride in. But soon they had to try if
they could live in the carriages. Before the masters' houses were
built, the labourers had gone off--they were building houses and
cultivating land for themselves, and the masters were left to sit in
their carriages. Whether this exact thing happened I do not know, but
this sort of thing has happened a thousand times. There has been a
whole series of attempts to transplant to the colonies a graduated
English society. But they have always failed at the first step. The
rude classes at the bottom felt that they were equal to or better than
the delicate classes at the top; they shifted for themselves, and left
the "gentle-folks" to shift for themselves; the base of the elaborate
pyramid spread abroad, and th