ominal
profession or party connection. All regarded the triumph of Democracy as
near and inevitable, and all, from different points of view, regarded it
with a mixture of resignation and distrust, strangely significant in men
of such different views, of such diverse character, mental training, and
personal experience. None of them were fatalists, much less pessimists;
none inclined _a priori_ to that political superstition which
recognizes, in the tendencies of a thing so uncertain and changeful as
the spirit of the age, the hand of Providence, or the indication of
'manifest destiny.' All were men of more than average independence of
temper, an independence which, in one or two, approached nearly to that
which practical politicians call impracticability. None of them were
disposed to be silent when the many-headed Caesar had spoken. Mill's most
striking, and--to the credit of Democracy be it spoken--most popular
characteristic, was a stern and almost pardoxical defiance alike of
personal consequences and of public opinion. On the verge of his
entrance into public life he affronted the working-classes by telling
them, with more than Carlylese directness and exaggeration, that they
were 'mostly liars.' If ever there were a man sure to protest to the
last against false doctrines and mischievous tendencies, to protest the
more fiercely the more certain their victory seemed, it was John Stuart
Mill.

Tocqueville, conscious of no common political and administrative
capacity--a statesman whose strong popular sympathies, practical wisdom,
contempt of popular catchwords, knowledge of and respect for concrete
facts; above all, whose signal freedom from the characteristic
weaknesses and vices of French statesmanship, rendered him the fittest
of all men to direct the destiny of France, whose counsels and guidance
would have saved her from all the worst mistakes and most signal
disasters--was content to spend a lifetime first in opposition,
afterwards in absolute exile from public life, rather than go 'the way
that was not his way for an inch.' An Orleanist, an enthusiastic lover
of Parliamentary institutions, he would not stoop with Guizot and Thiers
to serve a King whose power was founded on corruption. A minister of the
President, he held aloof as sternly from the despotism of the Empire as
from the factions of the Republican Assembly. He never designed to
conceal or soften the expressions of the most unpopular sentiments or
con