ty which as much as, if not more than,
any other multiplies good results in practical life. It enables men to
see what is good; it gives them intellect enough for sufficient
perception; but it does not make men all intellect; it does not' sickly
them o'er with the pale cast of thought;' it enables them to do the
good things they see to be good, as well as to see that they are good.
And it is plain that a government by popular discussion tends to
produce this quality. A strongly idiosyncratic mind, violently disposed
to extremes of opinion, is soon weeded out of political life, and a
bodiless thinker, an ineffectual scholar, cannot even live there for a
day. A vigorous moderateness in mind and body is the rule of a polity
which works by discussion; and, upon the whole, it is the kind of
temper most suited to the active life of such a being as man in such a
world as the present one.

These three great benefits of free government, though great, are
entirely secondary to its continued usefulness in the mode in which it
originally was useful. The first great benefit was the deliverance of
mankind from the superannuated yoke of customary law, by the gradual
development of an inquisitive originality. And it continues to produce
that effect upon persons apparently far remote from its influence, and
on subjects with which it has nothing to do. Thus Mr. Mundella, a most
experienced and capable judge, tells us that the English artisan,
though so much less sober, less instructed, and less refined than the
artisans of some other countries, is yet more inventive than any other
artisan. The master will get more good suggestions from him than from
any other.

Again, upon plausible grounds--looking, for example, to the position of
Locke and Newton in the science of the last century, and to that of
Darwin in our own--it may be argued that there is some quality in
English thought which makes them strike out as many, if not more,
first-rate and original suggestions than nations of greater scientific
culture and more diffused scientific interest. In both cases I believe
the reason of the English originality to be that government by
discussion quickens and enlivens thought all through society; that it
makes people think no harm may come of thinking; that in England this
force has long been operating, and so it has developed more of all
kinds of people ready to use their mental energy in their own way, and
not ready to use it in any other w