Note 74 — Chapter XIV · DEMOCRACY AND CROWD EXCITEMENT
Reading edition
Attributed to the Earl of Roscommon. See Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations.
Sir Thomas Browne characteristically describes the multitude as “that numerous piece of monstrosity, which, taken asunder, seem men, and the reasonable creatures of God, but confused together, make but one great beast, and a monstrosity more prodigious than Hydra.” Religio Medici, part ii, sec. 1. This is the very man that urged the burning of witches after the multitude was ready to give it up.