ain distinct, and administered by different bodies. When they are all
merged into each other, and rested in a single individual or a single
body of individuals, the government is then a despotism. The very
essence of what we understand by despotism, is this massing, this fusing
together of elements that can properly and justly live and act _only_
when each is at liberty, in freedom to be itself, in order that it may
perform its own, its peculiar and appropriate function, in harmonious
connection with others performing theirs. Despotism is the binding,
compressing, suffocating of individual life; first of the three
functions of government, which should always be kept separate, and next,
as a natural and inevitable consequence, of those who come under that
solidified administration. The nation governed by a despotism must be
moulded after the same pattern; it must necessarily have the variety and
freedom of its many constituent parts destroyed, and be massed and
melted together into a homogeneous and indiscriminate whole; only
permeated in all directions by the channels conveying the will of the
despotic head.

Thus the province of free government is not to be conceived of as that
of restraining, repressing, punishing. This is only its negative
function. Its positive office is the very opposite, and is truly a most
exalted one. And this is, to remove every barrier to the freest outflow
of human energies. It is to give an open field and the widest scope for
the play of every human faculty consistent with right. Government does
this, by establishing order among multitudes teeming with life and
activity--each seeking, in his own way, the broadest vent for his
God-given energies. These human energies are given to men for the very
purpose that they may flow forth in a thousand modes of activity and
industry, and that, thus, men may mutually impart an exalted happiness
upon each other. These energies are to be repressed only when they are
wrong, when they take a wrong direction, when they conflict with the
welfare of the community. When these energies, these human impulses to
act, are right, when they aim at useful results, then they must have
every facility, every possible channel opened to their outflow. And the
very first and most essential condition of this free outflow of life
among multitudes is, that there be order among them--that there be some
system, some methodical arrangement whereby concert and unity of action
may