Page:Democracy in America (Reeve, v. 1).djvu/11

 is nothing worth; that is, they can judge well of the attaining any end, but cannot judge of the value of the end itself. If England has hitherto maintained a sober and becoming position in the midst of greater revolutions than the world has witnessed since the Christian æra, not the less does it behove her to meditate upon the lessons of her allies and her descendants. What her increasing intelligence might suggest, her increasing evil, her increasing population, her burdens, her crime, and her perils enforce: the democratic element must be met, and to be met it must be known, before the unhallowed rites of destruction have begun; before recourse has been had to the probabilities of chance, in ignorance of the probabilities of cause; before the vertigo of conquest has seized the lower orders, or the palsy of dejection fallen upon the aristocracy. It is presumed that the lesson will not be the less worthy of our attention because it is given us by a writer whose national experience and whose