Note 132 — Chapter VII · DEMOCRACY AND STANDARDS
Reading edition
“Individuals and families, associations and dependencies were so much material that the sovereign power consumed for its own purposes. What the slave was in the hands of his master, the citizen was in the hands of the community. The most sacred obligations vanished before the public advantage. The passengers existed for the sake of the ship. By their disregard for private interests, and for the moral welfare and improvement of the people, both Greece and Rome destroyed the vital elements on which the prosperity of nations rests, and perished by the decay of families and the depopulation of the country. They survive not in their institutions but in their ideas, and by their ideas, especially on the art of government, they are—
The dead, but sceptred sovereigns who still rule Our spirits from their urns.
To them, indeed, may be tracked nearly all the errors that are undermining political society—communism, utilitarianism, the confusion between tyranny and authority, and between lawlessness and freedom.” (Lord Acton: History of Freedom and Other Essays, p. 17.)