But the difficulty of keeping a good legislature, is evidently secondary to the difficulty of first getting it.  There are two kinds of nations which can elect a good Parliament.  The first is a nation in which the mass of the people are intelligent, and in which they are comfortable.  Where there is no honest poverty, where education is diffused, and political intelligence is common, it is easy for the mass of the people to elect a fair legislature.  The idea is roughly realised in the North American colonies of England, and in the whole free States of the Union.  In these countries there is no such thing as honest poverty; physical comfort, such as the poor cannot imagine here, is there easily attainable by healthy industry.  Education is diffused much, and is fast spreading, Ignorant emigrants from the Old World often prize the intellectual advantages of which they are themselves destitute, and are annoyed at their inferiority in a place where rudimentary culture is so common.  The greatest difficulty of such new communities is commonly geographical.  The population is mostly scattered; and where population is sparse, discussion is difficult.  But in a country very large, as we reckon in Europe, a people really intelligent, really educated, really comfortable, would soon form a good opinion.  No one can doubt that the New England States, if they were a separate community, would have an education, a political capacity, and an intelligence such as the numerical majority of no people, equally numerous, has ever possessed.  In a State of this sort, where all the community is fit to choose a sufficient legislature, it is possible, it is almost easy, to create that legislature.  If the New England States possessed a Cabinet government as a separate nation, they would be as renowned in the world for political sagacity as they now are for diffused happiness.

The structure of these communities is indeed based on the principle of equality, and it is impossible that any such community can wholly satisfy the severe requirements of a political theorist.  In every old community its primitive and guiding assumption is at war with truth.  By its theory all people are entitled to the same political power, and they can only be so entitled on the ground that in politics they are equally wise.  But at the outset of an agricultural colony this postulate is as near the truth as politics want.  There are in such communities no large properties, no great capitals, no refined classes—­every one is comfortable and homely, and no one is at all more.  Equality is not artificially established in a new colony; it establishes itself.  There is a story that among the first settlers in Western Australia, some, who were rich, took out labourers at their own expense, and also carriages to ride in.  But soon they had to try if they could live in the carriages.  Before the masters’ houses were built, the labourers had gone off—­they were building houses and cultivating land for themselves,