"Are they fit to be the legislators of a whole people who themselves know not what law, what reason, what right and wrong, what crooked and straight, what licit and illicit means? who think that all power consists in outrage, all dignity in the parade of insolence? who neglect every other consideration for the corrupt gratification of their friendships or the prosecution of their resentments? who disperse their own relations and creatures through the provinces for the sake of levying taxes and confiscating goods--men, for the greater part the most profligate and vile, who buy up for themselves what they pretend to expose to sale, who thence collect and exorbitant mass of wealth, which they fraudulently divert from the public service, who thus spread their pillage through the country and in a moment emerge from penury and rags to a state of splendor and wealth?"
John Milton
Second Defense of the English People
1654
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