What the preachers of physical force seem to ignore in arguing about the basis of government, is the aim of government. What, in the minds and consciences of those who believe in government, is government aiming for? Is its aim only to keep order or to be just? Does it seek to repress humanity to the utmost extent, or to develop it? To wrap its talents in a napkin, or to make it spiritually a ruler of cities? What is humanity out for? To what is it evolving? What has been its impulse, its motive force in pressing for, and in extracting from reluctant authorities Representative Government, with its accompanying symbol--the voice of the majority? It has been seeking humane government--in the belief, surely, that the nearer you get to really humane government the more will unrest and revolt and crime cease; and, by the consequent reduction of the police and of the forces of repression now needed, repay the State a hundred-fold for the liberties it has established. And majority rule is merely a device to get nearer to humane government, to open up the mind of man to his own humane possibilities, and to develop his trust in others by reposing trust in him. The more you spread government as an organization of the people themselves, the more humane, upon that working basis, are likely to be its operations--on one condition: that such organisation of the people, whatever its numbers, submits to the operation of its own laws and shares equally in the conditions which it imposes--that, if it provides a qualification for citizenship, it provides also the means for all to qualify. Now this brings us to the relative duties of those who govern and of those who are governed; and, whereas, fundamentally their duty is the same, in one important respect it differs. In each case, broadly and fundamentally, their duty is toward their neighbour--to do to him as they would he should do unto them. That axiom, rightly carried out, covers all the law and the prophets, being greater than either; nay, if it were rightly and universally carried out, the law and the prophets might safely be shelved. Law merely exists as an expedient, because men have not yet learned thoroughly to do, or even to wish to do, their duty toward their neighbour; and as law is an imperfect thing, only existing because of, and only applicable to, imperfect conditions, the law and its upholders are not, and never can be, a perfect expression of that duty which is mutually owed by all. Law is only an expedient for averting greater evils which might, and probably would, take place without it in our present very imperfect stage of human development.