"A good government implies two things; first, fidelity to the objects of the government; secondly, a knowledge of the means, by which those objects can be best attained"
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Story’s line lands like a judge’s bench ruling on politics: stop confusing virtue with competence. “Fidelity to the objects of the government” is a loaded demand. It presumes government has legitimate ends - not just power for power’s sake, not the vanity projects of factions. In Story’s early-American context, those “objects” were the constitutional promises of republican self-rule, ordered liberty, and national stability, all under constant stress from party combat, regional rivalry, and a young state still testing whether it could govern itself without sliding into patronage or demagoguery.
The second clause is the sharper blade: “knowledge of the means.” Story is warning that noble intentions don’t govern; technique does. Administration, law, finance, and institutions are not moral accessories but the machinery that makes ideals real. That’s the subtext aimed at a public culture that loves principled talk and distrusts “experts”: you can be sincerely devoted to the public good and still wreck it through ignorance, impatience, or magical thinking.
As a judge, Story also smuggles in a judicial temperament: means matter because means are where abuses hide. Fidelity without know-how becomes zeal. Know-how without fidelity becomes technocratic self-dealing. The pairing is a constitutional argument in miniature: legitimacy is a marriage of ends and constraints, purpose and method. It’s an unusually modern rebuke to a politics that treats governance as branding - and a reminder that in a republic, outcomes are not accidental; they’re engineered.
The second clause is the sharper blade: “knowledge of the means.” Story is warning that noble intentions don’t govern; technique does. Administration, law, finance, and institutions are not moral accessories but the machinery that makes ideals real. That’s the subtext aimed at a public culture that loves principled talk and distrusts “experts”: you can be sincerely devoted to the public good and still wreck it through ignorance, impatience, or magical thinking.
As a judge, Story also smuggles in a judicial temperament: means matter because means are where abuses hide. Fidelity without know-how becomes zeal. Know-how without fidelity becomes technocratic self-dealing. The pairing is a constitutional argument in miniature: legitimacy is a marriage of ends and constraints, purpose and method. It’s an unusually modern rebuke to a politics that treats governance as branding - and a reminder that in a republic, outcomes are not accidental; they’re engineered.
Quote Details
| Topic | Vision & Strategy |
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