Speeches and Letters on Reform: With a Preface

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Robert John Bush, 1867 - Political Science - 212 pages
 

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Page 166 - Either some Caesar or Napoleon will seize the reins of government with a strong hand, or your republic will be as fearfully plundered and laid waste by barbarians in the twentieth century as the Roman Empire was in the fifth, with this difference, that the Huns and Vandals who ravaged the Roman Empire came from without, and that your Huns and Vandals will have been engendered within your own country by your own institutions.
Page 165 - On one side is a statesman preaching patience, respect for vested rights, strict observance of public faith ; on the other is a demagogue ranting about the tyranny of capitalists and usurers, and asking why anybody should be permitted to drink champagne, and to ride in a carriage, while thousands of honest folks are in want of necessaries.
Page 165 - The day will come when in the state of New York a multitude of people, none of whom has had more than half a breakfast, or expects to have more than half a dinner, will choose a legislature.
Page 212 - ... we are about to barter maxims and (traditions that have never failed, for theories and doctrines that never have succeeded. Democracy you vimay have at any time. Night and day the gate is open that leads to that bare and level plain, where every ant's nest is a mountain and every thistle a forest tree.
Page 165 - I seriously apprehend that you will, in some such season of adversity as I have described, do things which will prevent prosperity from returning...
Page 45 - That your petitioners deeply deplore the existence of any kind of monopoly in this nation, and whilst they unequivocally condemn the levying of any tax upon the necessaries of life, and upon those articles principally required by the labouring classes, they are also sensible that the abolition of any...
Page 42 - ... with judgment and diffidence, — by perpetually bringing the theory which we have constructed to the test of new facts, — by correcting, or altogether abandoning it, according as those new facts prove it to be partially or fundamentally unsound.
Page 206 - By heaven, methinks it were an easy leap, To pluck bright honour from the pale-faced moon, Or dive into the bottom of the deep, Where fathom-line could never touch the ground, And pluck up drowned honour by the locks...
Page 22 - You have had the opportunity of knowing some of the constituencies of this country, and I ask if you want venality, ignorance, drunkenness, and the means of intimidation; if you want impulsive, unreflecting, and violent people, where will you go to look for them, to the top or the bottom?
Page 165 - The supreme power is in the hands of a class, numerous indeed, but select, — of an educated class, — of a class which is, and knows itself to be, deeply interested in the security of property, and the maintenance of order.

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