tt, "some of our really excellent plain
Scotch people. The character of a nation is not to be learnt from its
fine folks, its fine gentlemen and ladies; such you meet everywhere,
and they are everywhere the same." While statesmen, philosophers, and
divines represent the thinking power of society, the men who found
industries and carve out new careers, as well as the common body of
working-people, from whom the national strength and spirit are from
time to time recruited, must necessarily furnish the vital force and
constitute the real backbone of every nation.

Nations have their character to maintain as well as individuals;
and under constitutional governments--where all classes more or less
participate in the exercise of political power--the national character
will necessarily depend more upon the moral qualities of the many than
of the few. And the same qualities which determine the character of
individuals, also determine the character of nations. Unless they are
highminded, truthful, honest, virtuous, and courageous, they will be
held in light esteem by other nations, and be without weight in
the world. To have character, they must needs also be reverential,
disciplined, self-controlling, and devoted to duty. The nation that has
no higher god than pleasure, or even dollars or calico, must needs be in
a poor way. It were better to revert to Homer's gods than be devoted to
these; for the heathen deities at least imaged human virtues, and were
something to look up to.

As for institutions, however good in themselves, they will avail but
little in maintaining the standard of national character. It is the
individual men, and the spirit which actuates them, that determine the
moral standing and stability of nations. Government, in the long run, is
usually no better than the people governed. Where the mass is sound in
conscience, morals, and habit, the nation will be ruled honestly and
nobly. But where they are corrupt, self-seeking, and dishonest in heart,
bound neither by truth nor by law, the rule of rogues and wirepullers
becomes inevitable.

The only true barrier against the despotism of public opinion, whether
it be of the many or of the few, is enlightened individual freedom and
purity of personal character. Without these there can be no vigorous
manhood, no true liberty in a nation. Political rights, however broadly
framed, will not elevate a people individually depraved. Indeed, the
more complete a system of p