he battle of nations; but there
are many others. A little perfection in POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS may do
it. Travellers have noticed that among savage tribes those seemed to
answer best in which the monarchical power was most predominant, and
those worst in which the 'rule of many' was in its vigour. So long as
war is the main business of nations, temporary despotism--despotism
during the campaign--is indispensable. Macaulay justly said that many
an army has prospered under a bad commander, but no army has ever
prospered under a 'debating society;' that many-headed monster is then
fatal. Despotism grows in the first societies, just as democracy grows
in more modern societies; it is the government answering the primary
need, and congenial to the whole spirit of the time. But despotism is
unfavourable to the principle of variability, as all history shows. It
tends to keep men in the customary stage of civilisation; its very
fitness for that age unfits it for the next. It prevents men from
passing into the first age of progress--the VERY slow and VERY
gradually improving age. Some 'standing system' of semi-free discussion
is as necessary to break the thick crust of custom and begin progress
as it is in later ages to carry on progress when begun; probably it is
even more necessary. And in the most progressive races we find it. I
have spoken already of the Jewish prophets, the life of that nation,
and the principle of all its growth. But a still more progressive
race--that by which secular civilisation was once created, by which it
is now mainly administered--had a still better instrument of
progression. 'In the very earliest glimpses,' says Mr. Freeman, 'of
Teutonic political life, we find the monarchic, the aristocratic, and
the democratic elements already clearly marked. There are leaders with
or without the royal title; there are men of noble birth, whose noble
birth (in whatever the original nobility may have consisted) entitles
them to a pre-eminence in every way; but beyond these there is a free
and armed people, in whom it is clear that the ultimate sovereignty
resides. Small matters are decided by the chiefs alone; great matters
are submitted by the chiefs to the assembled nation. Such a system is
far more than Teutonic; it is a common Aryan possession; it is the
constitution of the Homeric Achaians on earth and of the Homeric gods
on Olympus.' Perhaps, and indeed probably, this constitution may be
that of the primitive