The political and social institutions of a nation are surely the features that best lend themselves to the test of the stage it has attained in progressive development, or degeneration. If laws and institutions are such as to give every inhabitant the best chances of attaining to a high degree of civilization, of morality, and of happiness, and such laws and institutions emanate from the people themselves, and are not imposed by another nation and not by the freak of a despot, that nation is in a progressive state. It is difficult to imagine a country with good laws and good institutions without corresponding healthy conditions in all the other features of its existence. History offers no example of a community, or of a people, that has given itself laws and institutions equally beneficial to all the individuals, and yet exhibiting signs of decay in any domain of its culture. It is true that in a free, healthy, progressive State, especially a thoroughly democratic one, literature and art may not attain that hectic florescence so often co-existent with bad laws and bad institutions. But it has never been found that art and literature in such healthy nations are in a degenerating state. It is true that different minds hold different opinions as to the attributes of good laws and institutions. A man who believes that human beings are essentially wicked and brutal would call a government good only when it possessed power enough to keep the people in subjection; while he who has discovered that the good qualities in human beings spring from a natural instinct, and the bad ones from unfavourable conditions and corrupt surroundings, would only call that form of government good which afforded to each individual the greatest possible liberty consistent with the same degree of liberty in others. But there can be no hesitation as to what constitutes good government and good institutions, if we appeal to the only authority capable of judging with full knowledge of the case, namely, the individuals themselves. We often meet with people who look with distrust upon institutions and systems of government based on liberty, but this does not affect our assertion that the great mass of individuals would personally, and for themselves, claim as much liberty as they could obtain. Those who advocate authoritative administration and the subjection of the people to a class, or an elected body, behold in such constitutions the means not of reducing their own liberty, but of extending it beyond legitimate boundaries, and at the expense of the liberty of others.