When two men are fighting and agree that they will stop at sundown, we have government. Their consent is government. Their memory of that consent is an institution. There never was a government of any kind or for any purpose that did not rest upon the consent of the governed; but the means by which the consent is obtained have varied. The consent records the extent to which the individuals are alike. It is only by virtue of similarity in the governed that government exists. On a ship, all men are alike in their danger of being drowned, and they consent to dictation from the captain for the welfare of all. The aim of the despot is to keep the population alike in their need of him or their fear of him. After the French Revolution, the entire French people were alike both in their desire for order and in their lack of training in self-government. A dictator was inevitable. Gouverneur Morris, whose experience in America qualified him to judge, saw the matter clearly as early as 1791. Napoleon kept the people alike, by the two opposite means of giving them social order and foreign war. Henry V. kept himself on top in England by waging war in France. Seward in 1861 thought to unite the people of the United States by declaring war against everybody in Europe. The German Emperor is sustained to-day by the popular fear of France and Russia. It makes no difference what foolishness he commits; so long as that fear predominates he will be absolute. For the converse proposition is also true, that in so far as people are like-minded, they must be ruled by a single mind. A hundred Malays cannot establish a representative government. They must have a boss. The population of Russia can only be ruled by a Czar. So also whenever under any form of government all the people want one thing, one man does it. The reasons for it are invented afterwards, and “war powers” are found to justify the proclamation setting the slaves free. The extent to which people are similar to each other will be recorded in their institutions; in fact, those institutions are nothing but dials of similarity. For this reason any popular national institution gives you the nation. Moreover any ruler, any system, any consent has a tendency to modify the future because he or it is advertised and established. It is a factor in the consciousness of every individual. It is the conservative. It tends to affect the conduct and mind of every one, for any one coming in contact with it must conform or resist. It is a challenge to the individual. It impinges upon him. The thing changes daily in his mind, and occupies now more, now less, of his activities. In cases where his whole external conduct has been absorbed by one such power we have absolute rule, religious or military, and a uniform population. If there be a single predominating power which has not yet completely conquered, we have in some form or another a record of its growth by a tendency toward absolutism.