a class whose will is to be law-abiding. He, if anybody, deserves punishment; and Parliaments (backed by whatever majority) which, through maintaining political inequalities, produce such results, are under the same condemnation. The onus probandi of their beneficence rests upon them; and if, commissioned to secure peace and order, they produce only unrest and disorder, then the proof is against them.
Listen to these remarkable words by so great a supporter of constitutional authority as Edmund Burke:
"Nations," he says, "are not primarily ruled by laws, still less by violence. Whatever original energy may be supposed in force or regulation, the operation of both is, in truth, merely instrumental. Nations are governed by the same methods and on the same principles by which an individual without authority is often able to govern those who are his equals or his superiors—by a knowledge of their temper, and by a judicious management of it. I mean—when public affairs are steadily and quietly conducted: not when government is nothing but a continued scuffle between the magistrate and the multitude, in which sometimes one and sometimes the other is uppermost, in which they alternately yield and prevail in a series of contemptible victories and scandalous submissions. The temper of the people amongst whom he presides ought, therefore, to be the first study of the statesman.
