Excerpt from The Princeton Review: July-December, 1883 It is, of course, not to be assumed that every member of a political society will be sufficiently enlightened and virtuous to make a wise ruler; but the aggregate wisdom and virtue of the community may be supposed superior to that of any one indi vidual, so that the collected sense of the people respecting their own affairs is likely to be better than that of a single person, however great or eminent, and better deserving of expression in the laws of the State and in their administration. The self government of a State is not only, therefore, theoretically the best, but it only requires that the sense of the people on public affairs Shall be properly collected and given effect, to make it best in reality. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.