Government was intended to suppress injustice, but it offers new occasions and temptations for the commission of it. - William Godwin

A common mortal periodically selected by his fellow-citizens to watch over their own interests, can never be supposed to possess this stupendous virtue.

But there are certain disadvantages that may seem the necessary result of democratical equality. In political society it is reasonable to suppose that the wise will be outnumbered by the unwise, and it will be inferred ‘that the welfare of the whole will therefore be at the mercy of ignorance and folly.

The views into which I have been led, as to the effects flowing from the mortality of man to human affairs, and the feelings and sentiments it becomes us to cherish respecting the Illustrious Dead, I apprehend to be reasonable and true. Inestimable benefit will in my opinion flow, from the habit of seeing with the intellectual eye things not visible to the eye of the sense, and our attaining the craft and mystery, by which we may, spiritually, each in his several sphere, ‘Compel the earth and ocean to give up / Their dead alive.’ For just so much time as any one shall spend in reading and meditating on the suggestions of these pages, provided it be done in a serious frame, the project is a reality, and as if it were executed: and I hope most persons who shall be induced to examine these hints, will derive from them a solemnity and composure of spirit, which so far as it operates at all, will be favourable to elevation of mind, to generous action, and to virtue.