… is from page 179 of the 2006 edition of H.L. Mencken’s 1955 collection Prejudices: A Selection; here, Mencken is speaking of the ordinary citizen of modern-day America:
But he can no more escape the tax-gatherer and the policemen, in all their protean and multitudinous guises, than he can escape the ultimate mortician. They beset him constantly, day in and day out, in ever-increasing numbers and in ever more disarming masks and attitudes. They invade his liberty, affront his dignity and greatly incommode his search for happiness, and every year they demand and wrest from him a larger and larger share of his worldly goods.
