Nor do we say that every form of
government, which succeeds in governing, was originally set up in
justice; nor again that the success of its rule is necessarily due to
the use of just means. The Committee of Public Safety in Paris in 1794
did manage to govern, but it was erected in blood, and it governed by
an unscrupulous disregard of everybody's rights. All that we say is,
that no distribution of civil power as a distribution, or no polity as
a polity (s. iii., n. 5, p. 312), is unlawful, if by it the government
can be carried on. And the reason is plain. For all that nature
requires is that there should be an efficient civil authority, not
that this man should have it, or that one man or other should have it
all, or that a certain class in council assembled should engross it,
or that all the inhabitants of the country should participate in it.
Any one of these arrangements that will work, satisfies the exigency
of nature for civil rule, and is therefore in itself a lawful polity.
4. Working, and therefore, as explained, lawful polities are as
multitudinous as the species of animals.
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