The assurances of the Future are strengthened, when I look at Government and see how its character constantly improves as it comes within the sphere of knowledge. Men must know before they can act wisely; and this simple rule is applicable alike to individuals and communities. “Go, my son,” said the Swedish Chancellor, “and see with what little wisdom the world is governed.”[113] Down to his day government was little more than an expedient, a device, a trick, for the aggrandizement of a class, of a few, or, it may be, of one. Calling itself Commonwealth, it was so in name only. There were classes always, and egotism was the prevailing law. Macchiavelli, the much-quoted herald of modern politics, insisted that all governments, whether monarchical or republican, owed their origin or reformation to a single lawgiver, like Lycurgus or Solon.[114] If this was true in his day, it is not in ours. In the presence of an enlightened people, a single lawgiver, or an aristocracy of lawgivers, is impossible, while government becomes the rule of all for the good of all,--not the One Man Power, so constant in history,--not the Triumvirate, sometimes occurring,--not an Oligarchy, which is the rule of a few,--not an Aristocracy, which is the rule of a class,--not any combination, howsoever accepted, sanctioning exclusions,--but the whole body of the people, without exclusion of any kind, or, in the great words of Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg, “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.”[115]