fane enough to assert, and the ruled weak
enough to allow, that the right of a man to govern his fellows was a
direct gift from God, a departure from the bold and selfish principle,
though it were only in profession, was thought sufficient to give a
character of freedom and common sense to the polity of a nation. This
belief is not without some justification, since it establishes in
theory, at least, the foundations of government on a base sufficiently
different from that which supposes all power to be the property of one,
and that one to be the representative of the faultless and omnipotent
Ruler of the Universe. With the first of these principles we have
nothing to do, except it be to add that there are propositions so
inherently false that they only require to be fairly stated to produce
their own refutation; but our subject necessarily draws us into a short
digression on the errors of the second as they existed in Venice.

It is probable that when the patricians of St. Mark created a community
of political rights in their own body, they believed their State had
done all that was necessary to merit the high and generous title it
assumed. They had innovated on a generally received principle, and they
cannot claim the distinction of being either the first or the last who
have imagined that to take the incipient steps in political improvement
is at once to reach the goal of perfection. Venice had no doctrine of
divine right, and as her prince was little more than a pageant, she
boldly laid claim to be called a Republic. She believed that a
representation of the most prominent and brilliant interests in society
was the paramount object of government, and faithful to the seductive
but dangerous error, she mistook to the last, collective power for
social happiness.

It may be taken as a governing principle, in all civil relations, that
the strong will grow stronger and the feeble more weak, until the first
become unfit to rule or the last unable to endure. In this important
truth is contained the secret of the downfall of all those states which
have crumbled beneath the weight of their own abuses. It teaches the
necessity of widening the foundations of society until the base shall
have a breadth capable of securing the just representation of every
interest, without which the social machine is liable to interruption
from its own movement, and eventually to destruction from its own
excesses.

Venice, though ambitious and