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Quotation of the Day…

… is from page 289 of the 1978 collection, edited by Eric Mack, of Auberon Herbert’s remarkable essays, The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State; specifically, it’s from Herbert’s 1906 lecture “Mr. Spencer and the Great Machine”:

Does it mend matters to say that under our system we choose the best man available, and leave the hundred questions for him to deal with?  That is only our old friend, the autocrat, come back once more, with a democratic polish rubbed over his face to disguise and, as far as may be, to beautify his appearance.  Our sin consists in the suppression of our own selves and our own opinions; and in one sense we fall lower than the slaves of the autocrat, for they are simply sinned against, but we take an active part in the sin against ourselves.

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