t any action approved by two of them, with or
without the assent of the third, will be taken. This is called--or was
called when it was an accepted principle in political and other
affairs--"the rule of the majority." Evidently, under the malign
conditions supposed, it is the only practicable plan of getting anything
done. A and B rule and overrule C, not because they ought, but because
they can; not because they are wiser, but because they are stronger. In
order to avoid a conflict in which he is sure to be worsted, C submits as
soon as the vote is taken. C is as likely to be right as A and B; nay,
that eminent ancient philosopher, Professor Richard A. Proctor (or
Proroctor, as the learned now spell the name), has clearly shown by the
law of probabilities that any one of the three, all being of the same
intelligence, is far likelier to be right than the other two.

It is thus that the "rule of the majority" as a political system is
established. It is in essence nothing but the discredited and
discreditable principle that "might makes right"; but early in the life of
a republic this essential character of government by majority is not seen.
The habit of submitting all questions of policy to the arbitrament of
counting noses and assenting without question to the result invests the
ordeal with a seeming sanctity, and what was at first obeyed as the
command of power comes to be revered as the oracle of wisdom. The
innumerable instances--such as the famous ones of Galileo and Keeley--in
which one man has been right and all the rest of the race wrong, are
overlooked, or their significance missed, and "public opinion" is followed
as a divine and infallible guide through every bog into which it blindly
stumbles and over every precipice in its fortuitous path. Clearly, sooner
or later will be encountered a bog that will smother or a precipice that
will crush. Thoroughly to apprehend the absurdity of the ancient faith in
the wisdom of majorities let the loyal reader try to fancy our gracious
Sovereign by any possibility wrong, or his unanimous Ministry by any
possibility right!

During the latter half of the "nineteenth century" there arose in the
Connected States a political element opposed to all government, which
frankly declared its object to be anarchy. This astonishing heresy was not
of indigenous growth: its seeds were imported from Europe by the
emigration or banishment thence of criminals congenitally incapable of
unde