There is, moreover, an extraordinary power of tyranny invested in the chiefs of tribes and nations of men, that so vastly outweighs the analogous power possessed by the leaders of animal herds as to rank as a special attribute of human society, eminently conducive to slavishness.  If any brute in a herd makes itself obnoxious to the leader, the leader attacks him, and there is a free fight between the two, the other animals looking on the while.  But if a man makes himself obnoxious to his chief, he is attacked, not by the chief single-handed, but by the overpowering force of his executive.  The rebellious individual has to brave a disciplined host; there are spies who will report his doings, a local authority who will send a detachment of soldiers to drag him to trial; there are prisons ready built to hold him, civil authorities wielding legal powers of stripping him of all his possessions, and official executioners prepared to torture or kill him.  The tyrannies under which men have lived, whether under rude barbarian chiefs, under the great despotisms of half-civilised Oriental countries, or under some of the more polished but little less severe governments of modern days, must have had a frightful influence in eliminating independence of character from the human race.  Think of Austria, of Naples, and even of France under Napoleon III.  It was stated[1] in 1870 that, according to papers found at the Tuileries, 26,642 persons had been arrested in France for political offences since 2nd December, 1851, and that 14,118 had been transported, exiled, or detained in prison.

I have already spoken in Hereditary Genius of the large effects of religious persecution in comparatively recent years, on the natural character of races, and shall not say more about it here; but it must not be omitted from the list of steady influences continuing through ancient historical times down, in some degree, to the present day, in destroying the self-reliant, and therefore the nobler races of men.

I hold that the blind instincts evolved under these long-continued conditions have been ingrained into our breed, and that they are a bar to our enjoying the freedom which the forms of modern civilisation are otherwise capable of giving us.  A really intelligent nation might be held together by far stronger forces than are derived from the purely gregarious instincts.  A nation need not be a mob of slaves, clinging to one another through fear, and for the most part incapable of self-government, and begging to be led; but it might consist of vigorous self-reliant men, knit to one [6] another by innumerable ties, into a strong, tense, and elastic organisation.

[Footnote 6:  Daily News, 17th October, 1870.]

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The character of the corporate action of a nation in which each man judges for himself, might be expected to possess statistical constancy.  It would be the expression of the dominant character of a large number of separate members of the same race, and ought therefore to be remarkably uniform.  Fickleness of national character is principally due to the several members of the nation exercising no independent judgment, but allowing themselves to be led hither and thither by the successive journalists, orators, and sentimentalists who happen for the time to have the chance of directing them.