only an expedient for averting greater evils which might, and probably would, take place without it in our present very imperfect stage of human development.
But there is one obvious difference between the governors and the governed. In the action of the former there is an assertion of authority—an underlying assumption of a power to improve matters by regulating them. In the governed there is no such assumption of moral superiority; the governed are there whether they like it or no; and the laws which condition their lives are laid upon them by a power beyond themselves, even when—under a representative system—they have secured some minute voice in regard to their shaping.
The governors, therefore, by their assumption of an ability to improve matters, are in a fiduciary position to the rest of the community—the onus probandi of their beneficence rests upon them and not upon the people. It is their duty to pacify the governed; it is not the duty of the governed to pacify them; and if they fail in the work of pacification, which is their main raison d'être, they, and not the community, have to meet the charge of functional incompetence.
Government is a function; being governed is not a function. Humanity in all stages of civilization or of savagery has fallen subject to government without being asked to show any certificate of its fitness to be governed. It is
