THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 181 



than the chairman's verbal description was vouchsafed : no printed 

 copies of it had been previously circulated, or were to be had at the 

 meeting. And yet, astonishing to relate, this proprietary body had 

 been already once betrayed by an agreement with this same leasing 

 company! had been led to undertake the making of the line on the 

 strength of a seeming guarantee, which proved to be no guarantee ! 

 See, then, the lesson. The constitution of this company, like that of 

 companies in general, was purely democratic. The proprietors elected 

 their directors, the directors their chairman; and there were special 

 provisions for restraining directors and replacing them when needful. 

 Yet these forms of free government had fallen into disuse. And it is 

 thus in all cases. Save on occasions when some scandalous misman- 

 agement or corruption, bringing great loss, has caused a revolutionary 

 excitement among them, railway-proprietors do not exercise their pow- 

 ers. Retiring directors beinsr reelected as a matter of form, the board 

 becomes practically a close body; usually some one member, often 

 the chairman, acquires supremacy ; and so the government lapses into 

 something between oligarchy and monarchy. All this, observe, hap- 

 pening not exceptionally but as a rule, happens among bodies of men 

 mostly well educated, and many highly educated people of means, 

 merchants, lawyers, clergymen, etc. Ample disproof, if there needed 

 any, of the notion that men are to be fitted for the right exercise of 

 power by teaching. 



And now to return : Any one, who looks through these facts and 

 facts akin to them for the truth they imply, may see that forms of 

 government are valuable only where they are products of national 

 character. No cunningly-devised political arrangements will of them- 

 selves do any thing. No amount of knowledge respecting the uses of 

 such arrangements will suffice. Nothing will suffice but the emotional 

 nature to which such arrangements are adapted a nature which, 

 during social progress, has evolved the arrangements. And wherever 

 there is want of congruity between the nature and the arrangements 

 wherever the arrangements, suddenly established by revolution, or 

 pushed too far in advance by reforming change, are of a higher type 

 than the national character demands, there is always a lapse propor- 

 tionate to the incongruity. In proof I might enumerate the illustra- 

 tions that lie scattered through the modern histories of Spain, of South 

 America, of Mexico. Or I might dwell on the lesson (before briefly 

 referred to) presented us in France ; where the recurring political cycle 

 always shows us that new Democracy is but old Despotism differently 

 spelt where now, as heretofore, we find Liberty Egalite, Fraternite, 

 conspicuous on the public buildings, and now, as heretofore, have for 

 interpretations of these words the extremest party-hatreds, vitupera- 

 tions and actual assaults in the Assembly, wholesale arrests of men 

 unfriendly to those in power, forbiddings of public meetings, and sup- 

 pressions of journals ; and where now, as heretofore, writers, professing 



