This prerogative of power, too, is elsewhere conceded by the multitude
to their rulers generally for some especial fitness, real or
imaginary, for the office they have assumed. Some services of their
own or of their ancestors to the state, some superiority, natural or
acquired, of parts or skill, at least some specialty of high culture
and elegant breeding, a quick sense of honor, a jealousy of insult to
the public, an impatience of personal stain,--some or all of these
qualities, appealing to the gratitude or to the imagination of the
masses, have usually been supposed to inhere in the class they permit
to rule over them. By virtue of some or all of these things, its
members have had allowed to them their privileges and their
precedency, their rights of exemption and of preeminence, their voice
potential in the councils of the state, and their claim to be foremost
in its defence in the hour of its danger. Some ray of imagination
there is, which, falling on the knightly shields and heraldic devices
that symbolize their conceded superiority, at least dazzles the eyes
and delights the fancy of the crowd, so as to blind them to the
inhering vices and essential fallacies of the Order to whose will they
bow.
Pages:
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387
388
389
390
391
392
393
394
395
396
397