556 LOGIC OF THE MORAL SCIENCES. 



able to decipher their system of conduct, who does 

 not take all these things into account. They are also 

 much influenced by the maxims and traditions which 

 have descended to them from other rulers, their pre- 

 decessors ; and which have been known to maintain, 

 during long periods, a successful struggle in a direction 

 contrary to the private interests of the rulers for the 

 time being. I put aside the influence of other 

 less general causes. Although, therefore, 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 ex- 

 planation of: and even the particulars which consti- 

 tute 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 respon- 

 sibility 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. We are not 

 speaking of perfect identity of interest, which is an 

 impracticable chimera; which, most assuredly, respon- 

 sibility to the people does not give. We 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 interest of the people that their ruler should do, 

 are also those which he is prompted to do by his 

 strongest personal interest, the consolidation of his 

 power. The suppression, for instance, of anarchy and 



