Excerpt from The Machine Abolished: And the People Restored to Power
Many readers, I am well aware, will claim that the account of the present state of our politics that is contained in the following pages is partial and overdrawn. I shall admit the justice of the critics, but only in the sense that the redeeming features of the situation are not equally presented with the condemnatory. But to do that did not belong to the purpose that I had in view in that description, which was to show that the condition of our political affairs is too shameful and calamitous to be willingly submitted to by an intelligent and virtuous people. In doing this no exaggeration has been practiced; and none was necessary.
The justice of my representation will be the more readily disputed because there seems, just now, to be a lull in the storm of our political afflictions, which sanguine and superficial observers readily take for a lasting change in the weather. But, while I am ready to believe that the public business is more honestly conducted to-day in the majority of our capitols and city halls than it was in 1870, I can see no ground for expecting that the amelioration will be permanent. Particular enormities may never be repeated, but the species is the native and inevitable product of our present political system, and will multiply in number and variety till the defects of that system are corrected. Moreover, no improvement whatever appears in the competency of the men who are put in charge of the public interests.
About the Publisher
Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. Это и многое другое вы найдете в книге The Machine Abolished (Charles Cotesworth Pinckney Clark)