Without a party a statesman is nothing. He sometimes forgets that awkward fact. - Ronald Syme

The political cant of a country is naturally and always most strongly in evidence on the side of the vested interests. In times of peace and prosperity it commands a wide measure of acquiescence, even of belief. Revolution rends the veil.

At Rome all men paid homage to libertas, holding it to be something roughly equivalent to the spirit and practice of Republican government. Exactly what corresponded to the Republican constitution was, however, a matter not of legal definition but of partisan interpretation. Libertas is a vague and negative notion—freedom from the rule of a tyrant or a faction. It follows libertas [liberty], like regnum [kingship] or dominatio [despotism], is a convenient term of political fraud.

The best party is but a kind of conspiracy against the Commonwealth.