A certain class--a very large class--call our politics dirty, and
our politicians dishonest. Young men whose education and position in the
commonwealth entitle them to a voice in public matters withdraw entirely
from all contact with the real life of the country. Liberty has become a
leper, a blind outcast in the eyes of the gilded youth of to-day. She sits
apart in ashes and in rags, and asks a little charity of the richest of
her children--a miserable mother despised and cast out by her sons. They
will not own her for their mother, nor spare one crust to feed her from
their plenty. They pass by on the other side, staring in admiration at the
image they have set up for themselves--the image of what they consider
social excellence, an idol compounded of decayed customs, and breathing
the poisonous emanations of a dead world, a monument raised to the
prejudices of former times, to the petty thirst for aristocratic
distinctions which they cherish in their hearts, to their love of money,
show, superficial culture, and armorial bearings.
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