Macaulay On U.S. Democracy
July 21, 2011
From the correspondence of Lord Macaulay and Henry Randall, author of the Life of Jefferson:
Your Constitution is all sail and no anchor. As I said before, when a society has entered on this downward progress, either civilization or liberty must perish. 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 country by your own institutions.
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3 Comments
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Mike Gibson
Jonathan Wilde
patrissimo
Guest Blogger
Will Chamberlain
Michael Strong
Brad Taylor
Z. Caceres
Wow! Beautiful writing and such prescience.
Yeah, they don’t make’em like they used to.
Blah blah blah. Today he’d be eating curry whilst his truant daughters bang the local muzz.