This chief object of desire may be permanent, and so govern the whole nation for all its history. Or it may be, on the other hand, a transient desire, which is to govern it for a time. In either case, it will appear prominently in the controlling classes; either in the classes which control all through, or in such as last only for a time. Thus the military desire appeared chiefly in the patricians of old Rome, and not much in the plebeians; the commercial ambition appeared in the nobles of Venice; the ecclesiastical in the priests of modern Rome, where the people care little for the church, though quite as much perhaps as it deserves. As the chief desire of the individual calls out appetites and passions, which are the machinery of that desire, and reconstructs the man in its image; so the desire of a nation, transient or permanent, becoming the master-motive of the people, calls out certain classes of men, who become its exponents, its machinery, and they make the constitution, institutions, and laws to correspond thereto. As with one man, so with the millions, there may be fluctuations of purpose for a time. I cannot expect that one man, or many men, will always pursue an object without at some time violating fundamental principles. I might have thought so once. But as I live longer, and see the passion and the ambition of men, see the force of circumstances, I know better. No ship sails across the ocean with a straight course, without changing a sail: it frequently leaves its direct line, now "standing" this way, now that; and the course is a very crooked one, although, as a whole, it is towards the mark.