POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS. 



massacres of subjects which Roman emperors directed, nor 

 the assassinations of relatives common among potentates 

 in the East, nor the impoverishment of whole nations by the 

 exactions of tyrants, must so revolt us as to prevent appre 

 ciation of the benefits which have, under certain conditions, 

 resulted from the unlimited power of the supreme man. N&quot;or 

 must the remembrances of torturing implements, and oub 

 liettes, and victims built into walls, shut out from our minds 

 the evidence that abject submission of the weak to the 

 strong, however unscrupulously enforced, has in some times 

 and places been necessary. 



So, too, with the associated ownership of man by man. 

 Absolute condemnation of slavery must be withheld, even if 

 we accept the tradition repeated by Herodotus, that to build 

 the Great Pyramid relays of a hundred thousand slaves toiled 

 for twenty years ; or even if we find it true that of the serfs 

 compelled to work at the building of St. Petersburg, three 

 hundred thousand perished. Though aware that the un 

 recorded sufferings of men and women held in bondage are 

 beyond imagination, we must be willing to receive such 

 evidence as there may be that benefits have resulted. 



In brief, trustworthy interpretations of social arrangements 

 imply an almost passionless consciousness. Though feeling 

 cannot and ought not to be excluded from the mind when 

 otherwise contemplating them, yet it ought to be excluded 

 when contemplating them as natural phenomena if) be under 

 stood in their causes and effects. 



43G. Maintenance of this mental attitude will be furthered 

 by keeping before ourselves the truth that in human actions 

 the absolutely bad may be relatively good, and the absolutely 

 good may be relatively bad. 



Though it has become a common-place that the institutions 

 under which one race prospers will not answer for another, 

 the recognition of this truth is by no means adequate. Men 

 svho have lost faith in &quot; paper constitutions/ nevertheless 



