That is the best government which desires to make the people happy, and knows how to make them happy. - Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay

What an incalculable debt do we owe to that little speck of land, Greece.—The principles of taste, the finest models of composition, the doctrines and the glorious examples to which we owe political freedom, the arts, the sciences, architecture, sculpture, every thing that is great and splendid in literature and politics, must be considered as ultimately derived from that little peninsula.

First, a man of sense would have known that a single experiment is not sufficient to establish a general rule even in sciences much less complicated than the science of government; that, since the beginning of the world, no two political experiments were ever made of which all the conditions were exactly alike; and that the only way to learn civil prudence from history is to examine and compare an immense number of cases.

"Heap heavier still the fetters; bar closer still the grate;
Patient as sheep we yield us up unto your cruelhate.
But by the shades beneath us, and by the gods above,
Add not unto your cruel hate your still more cruel love.
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Then leave the poor plebian his single tie to life -
The sweet, sweet love of daughter, of sister, and of wife,
The gentle speech, the balm for all that his vext soul endures,
The kiss in which he half forgets even such a yoke as yours.
Still let the maiden's beauty swell the father's breast with pride;
Still let the bridegroom's arms enfold an unpolluted bride.
Spare us the inexpiable wrong, the unutterable shame,
That turns the coward's heart to steel, the sluggard's blood to flame;
Lest when our latest hope is fled ye taste of our despair,
And learn by proof in some wild hour, how much the wretched dare."
A quote from Macauley where he describes how outrages in the early times of Rome goaded the plebians to rise against the patricians.