son is obedience, and obedience is, according to
John Stuart Mill, a quality essential to the people under
constitutional government.[16] Not only they must be obeyed, but also
they must obey. Law, which is constitutional, commands their
obedience, so long as it is not repealed, whether it promotes, or is
detrimental to, their welfare. This is especially the case in England,
where parliament is supreme and not the constitution, as in the United
States, though in both countries _vox populi_ will tell in the end. On
the other hand it may be disputed that if long despotism taught the
Asiatic people to be subservient to public authorities, it also made
them meek and slavish, entirely eradicating the spirit of
independence, indispensable to self-governing people. Granted, but how
shall this defect be remedied? Because they are too slavish and not
sufficiently independent, are they to crawl under absolute despotism
for another two thousand years, which would make them all the more
slavish, and all the less independent? Slavishness is obedience plus
something more. If political liberty were given the Asiatic people,
when they had just learned to obey, slavishness would never have
become their fault. The very fact of their being slavish proves that
despotism should have ceased to exist long before, and should cease
now, in order to cure them of this despicable disease. As far as this
question is concerned, then, the slavishness of the Asiatic people,
instead of being against their adaptability to constitutional
government, is for it. In the words of Macaulay, "If men are to wait
for liberty until they become wise and good in slavery, they may
indeed wait forever."[17]

[16] His Representative Government, pp. 85, 86.

[17] His Essay on Milton.

There may be a thousand other infirmities among these people, but most
of them doubtless are, or were, found among the highly civilized
people of to-day. Every nation can point with pride to some men of
admirable achievement, of brilliant genius, of saintly virtues, but
that same nation also contains the countless number of inebriates,
robbers, and murderers. Differences in environments and in the stage
of civilization have contributed much in differentiating the
inhabitants of the globe, but we must bear in mind that they are all
made by the same hand of the Creator, and are, in general, striving to
do good according to the dictates of their conscience. What
characterizes c