And as with men and women, so with peoples, who are made up of men and women. And yet, although, as the author of the “Wealth of Nations” expresses it, management and persuasion are always the easiest and safest instruments of government, as force and violence are the worst and most dangerous; such, it seems, is the natural insolence of man, that he almost always disdains to use the good instrument, except when he cannot or dare not use the bad one. Not that nations are without diversities of character, and so of susceptibility to diverse modes of government. Gibbon apologises, as it were, for Diocletian’s utter destruction of those proud cities, Busiris and Coptos, and for his severe treatment of Egypt in general, by the remark, that the character of the Egyptian nation, insensible to kindness, but extremely susceptible to fear, could alone justify this excessive rigour. The tone is that of the courtier Crispe, to Phocas, in Corneille’s “Heraclius:” “Il faut agir de force avec de tels esprits ... La violence est juste où la douceur est vaine.” And Coke maintains that if they are the best whom love induces, they are the most whom fear restrains: _Si meliores sunt quos ducit amor, plures sunt quos corrigit timor_. La Fontaine’s fable of the fishes and the flute-playing shepherd, intimates the sheer futility of wasting sweet sounds on ears not to be so caught. There are men, sententiously quoth Dr. Tempest, in the “Last Chronicle of Barset,” who are deaf as adders to courtesy, but who are compelled to obedience at once by ill-usage. Educationists must provide for the contingency of having to deal with abnormal natures of this crabbed and distorted kind. But as exceptions only. The Jesuits are confessedly masters of the arts of education; and the rule of the Jesuits is to lead not to drive, their pupils; to allure and win, not to coerce and constrain them. Winsome womankind is mistress of the like arts. Those of the sex who _are_ winsome, it has been said, with their plastic manners and non-aggressive force, always have their own way in the end. “They coax and flatter for their rights, and consequently they are given privileges in excess of their rights; whereas the women who take their rights, as things to which they are entitled without favour, lose them and their privileges together.” Kitely’s advice is good, in “Every Man in his Humour,” and of general application: “But rather use the soft persuading way, Whose powers will work more gently, and compose The imperfect thoughts you labour to reclaim; More winning, than enforcing the consent.”