Page:Aesthetic Papers.djvu/190

180 The truth is, that the whole notion of a government responsible to the people, in the sense usually understood, is absurd. It may be best, in certain stages of social progress, to have an elective government, and one chosen, like our own, by universal suffrage; but this can be true only on the supposition, that the nation will, on the whole, choose better men to govern, than would be chosen under an oligarchy or a despotism; and this can happen only if the men so chosen feel their responsibility to God more directly and intimately than if placed in power by an aristocracy, or the chances of birth or of war.

The difference in the mode of selecting the government is of little importance, excepting so far as it produces this effect; and, when once the choice is made, in one form of government or another, the governing power remains responsible only to God. It has the proper character of government, only so far as it embodies the eternal principles of God; and its only right, therefore, is the divine right. There may be a great choice in forms of appointing and changing the rulers, as tending to increase or diminish the temptations to depart from uprightness in the administration; arid we are well convinced, that our own Constitution, as understood by those who made it, is better suited to our state of society than any which has yet appeared in the world; but there can be no difference in the nature of the responsibility of the government, when established. In no case can the parties, chosen to administer it, look to the human appointing power as the guide to right government: here, indeed, they may meet with an exhibition of might, which may support it or overturn it; but, to find the right, they must look higher. On the other hand, a delegated government should be looked up to