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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Psychology of Revolution by Gustave le Bon: seditious disturbing it, the most illustrious subjects
persecuted, exiled, and punished by death at the will of a
violent windbag, one would conclude that this people, which so
prided itself on its liberty, was really the slave of a small
number of caballers, whom they called demagogues, and who made it
turn now in this direction, now in that, as their passions
changed, almost as the sea heaps the waves now one way, now
another, according to the winds which trouble it. You will seek
in vain in Macedonia, which was a monarchy, for as many examples
of tyranny as Athenian history will afford.''
Montesquieu had no greater admiration for the democracy. Having
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