ading impulses of office-seeking. Their lives
had given them little or no knowledge of these things; experience had
never suggested their importance, for their acquaintance with life was,
almost exclusively, such as could be acquired in the woods and forest
pathways.

But as time rolled away, and the population of the country became more
dense--as the pressure of external danger was withdrawn, and the
necessities of defence grew less urgent--the rigor of military
organization came gradually to be somewhat irksome. The seeds of civil
institutions began to germinate among the people, while the extending
interests of communities required corresponding enactments and
regulations. The instincts of social beings, love of home and family,
attachment to property, the desire of tranquillity, and, perhaps, a
leaven of ambition for good estimation among neighbors, all combined to
open men's eyes to the importance of peaceful institutions. The day of
the rifle and scalping-knife passed away, and justice without form--the
rule of the elementary strong-hand--gave place to order and legal
ceremony.

Then first began to appear the class of politicians, though, as yet,
office-seeking had not become a trade, nor office-holding a regular
means of livelihood. Politics had not acquired a place among the arts,
nor had its professors become the teachers of the land. There were few,
indeed, who sought to fill civil stations; and, although men's
qualifications for office were, probably, not any more rigidly examined
then than now, those who possessed the due degree of prominence, either
deemed themselves, or were believed by their fellow-citizens, peculiarly
capable of discharging such functions. They were generally men who had
made themselves conspicuous or useful in other capacities--who had
become well or favorably known to their neighbors through their zeal,
courage, sagacity, or public spirit. A leader of regulators, for
example, whose administration of his dangerous powers had been marked by
promptitude and severity, was expected to be equally efficient when
clothed with more regular authority. A captain of rangers, whose
enterprises had been remarkable for certainty and _finish_, would, it
was believed, do quite as good service, in the capacity of a civil
officer. A daring pioneer, whose courage or presence of mind had saved
himself and others from the dangers of the wilderness, was supposed to
be an equally sure guide in the pathles