109. No precise rule, therefore, can be laid down as to the conditions under which resistance to a despotic government becomes a duty. But the general questions which the good citizen should ask himself in contemplating such resistance will be, __(a)__ What prospect is there of resistance to the sovereign power leading to a modification of its character or an improvement in its exercise without its subversion? _(b)_ If it is overthrown, is the temper of the people such, are the influences on which the general maintenance of social order and the fabric of recognised rights depend so far separable from it, that its overthrow will not mean anarchy? _(c)_ If its overthrow does lead to anarchy, is the whole system of law and government so perverted by private interests hostile to the public, that there has ceased to be any common interest in maintaining it? 110. Such questions are so little likely to be impartially considered at a time when resistance to a despotic government is in contemplation, and, however impartially considered, are so intrinsically difficult to answer, that it may seem absurd to dwell on them. No doubt revolutionists do and must to a great extent 'go it blind.' Such beneficent revolutions as there have been could not have been if they did not. But in most of those questions of right and wrong in conduct, which have to be settled by consideration of the probable effects of the conduct, the estimate of effects which regulates our approval or disapproval upon a retrospective survey, and according to which we say that an act should or should not have been done, is not one which we could expect the agent himself to have made. The effort to make it would have paralysed his power of action.