Men of great property and position using their influence as a public trust, delicate in their sense of honor, and acting only from motives of right--these seemed to him the men who should with justice exercise political power.
He did not doubt that "there is no qualification for government but virtue and wisdom ...

wherever they are actually found, they have, in whatever state, condition, profession or trade, the passport to heaven"; but he is careful to dissociate the possibility that they can be found in those who practice the mechanical arts.

He did not mean that his aristocracy should govern without response to popular demand.

He had no objection to criticism, nor to the public exercise of government.

There was no reason even for agreement, so long as each party was guided by an honorable sense of the public good.