482 LOGIC OP THE MORAL SCIENCES. 



the private interest of the rulers or of the ruling class is a very 

 powerful force, constantly in action, and exercising the most 

 important influence upon their conduct ; there is also, in what 

 they do, a large portion which that private interest by no 

 means affords a sufficient explanation of: and even the 

 particulars which constitute the goodness or badness of their 

 government, are in some, and no small degree, influenced 

 by those among the circumstances acting upon them, which 

 cannot, with any propriety, be included in the term self- 

 interest. 



Turning now to the other proposition, that responsibility 

 to the governed is the only cause capable of producing in the 

 rulers a sense of identity of interest with the community ; this 

 is still less admissible as an universal truth, than even the 

 former. I am not speaking of perfect identity of interest, 

 which is an impracticable chimera ; which, most assuredly, 

 responsibility to the people does not give. I speak of identity 

 in essentials ; and the essentials are different at different places 

 and times. There are a large number of cases in which those 

 things which it is most for the general interest that the rulers 

 should do, are also those which they are prompted to do by 

 their strongest personal interest, the consolidation of their 

 power. The suppression, for instance, of anarchy and resis- 

 tance to law, the complete establishment of the authority of 

 the central government, in a state of society like that of 

 Europe in the middle ages, is one of the strongest interests 

 of the people, and also of the rulers simply because they are 

 the rulers : and responsibility on their part could not strengthen, 

 though in many conceivable ways it might weaken, the motives 

 prompting them to pursue this object. During the greater 

 part of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and of many other 

 monarchs who might be named, the sense of identity of interest 

 between the sovereign and the majority of the people was 

 probably stronger than it usually is in responsible govern- 

 ments : everything that the people had most at heart, the 

 monarch had at heart too. Had Peter the Great, or the 

 rugged savages whom he began to civilize, the truest inclina- 



