liberty among the people; and to its nature, if present.

* * * * *

It is taken for granted that the traveller is informed, before he sets
out, respecting the form of Government and general course of Legislation
of the nation he studies. He will watch both, attending upon the
administration as well as the formation of laws,--visiting, where it is
allowed, the courts of justice as well as the halls of parliament. But
he must remember that neither the composition of the government, nor the
body of the laws, nor the administration of them, is an evidence of
what the idea of liberty at present is among the people, except in a
democratic republic, where the acts of the government are the result of
the last expression of the national will. Every other representative
system is too partial for its legislative acts to be more than the
expression of the will of a party; and the great body of laws is
everywhere, except in America, the work of preceding ages. Though,
therefore, the observer will allow no great legislative and
administrative acts to pass without his notice, he will apply himself to
other sets of circumstances to ascertain what is the existing idea of
liberty prevalent among the people. He will observe, from certain facts
of their position, what this idea must be; and, from certain classes of
their own deeds, what it actually is.

One of the most important circumstances is, whether the population is
thinly sprinkled over the face of the country, or whether it is
collected into neighbourly societies. This all-important condition has
been alluded to so often already that it is only necessary to remind the
observer never to lose sight of it. "Plus un peuple nombreux se
rapproche," says Rousseau, "moins le gouvernement peut usurper sur le
souverain. L'avantage d'un gouvernement tyrannique est donc en ceci,
d'agir a grandes distances. A l'aide des points d'appui qu'il se donne,
sa force augmente au loin, comme celle des leviers. Celle du peuple, au
contraire, n'agit que concentree: elle s'evapore et se perd en
s'etendant, comme l'effet de la poudre eparse a terre, et qui ne prend
feu que grain a grain. Les pays les moins peuples sont ainsi les plus
propres a la tyrannie. Les betes feroces ne regnent que dans les
deserts."

It is obvious enough that the Idea of Liberty, which can originate only
in the intercourse of many minds, as the liberty itself can be wrought
out only by the labou