Excerpt from Imperial America
It is a tendency of this as of every age to be carried away by catchwords. Not all our bad intellectual qualities are of modern origin and development; every historical period has had its honourable statesmen and its rascally place -hunters. On the other hand, there is one characteristic peculiar to the present time - namely, that larger numbers of people can now be carried away by catchwords than formerly. Our hitherto inert masses, rural and urban, are moving; and that is the significant fact of modern times. The helots were little stirred by the reasons, chiefly economic, which resulted in Sparta's heading an earlier confederacy than America witnessed ; and the number of Englishmen who were really interested in the Marprelate Controversy was not so large as the historians of sixteenth-century England would make it appear.
Patriarchalism, feudalism, the leadership of aristocratic families - these were some of the factors that formerly prevented the masses from becoming prominent. The influence of such factors is now at an end. It may be suspended merely; or it may be extinguished for ever. At all events, we must recognise that it does not at present exist as an active force.
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