He neither
protects the law-abiding citizen nor chastises the criminal and
the rebel. In this particular, there is no distinction of party.
Tories can show no better record than Whigs, nor Liberals than
Conservatives. It is a question of the governing temper, which is
as absolutely requisite to the character of the ruler as courage
to the soldier or incorruptibility to the Judge.
It used to be held, and perhaps still is held, by what may be styled
the toad-eating school of publicists, that this governing temper
was an hereditary gift transmitted by a long line of ancestors,
who in their successive generations had possessed it, and had used
it on a large scale in the governance of England. "How natural,"
they exclaimed, "that Lord Nozoo, whose ancestors have ruled half
Loamshire since the Conquest, should have more notion of governing
men than that wretched Bagman, whose grandfather swept out the
shop, and who has never had to rule anyone except a clerk and a
parlourmaid!"
This sounded plausible enough, especially in the days when heredity
was everything, and when ancestral habit was held to explain, and if
necessary extenuate, all personal characteristics; but experience
and observation proved it false.
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