The
persons killed or banished amounted only to a few thousands every
year, but they were--no matter from what rank they came--the flower
of the population: the men whose labor and whose influence enabled
the State to keep its place in the march of civilization. The
picture is very valuable (particularly just now, when there is so
great a disposition to revel in the consciousness of vast numbers),
as calling attention to the smallness of the area within which,
after all, the sources of national greatness and progress are to be
sought. The mind which keeps the mass in motion, which saves and
glorifies it, would most probably, if we could lay bare the secret
of national life, be found in the possession of a very small
proportion of the people, though not in any class in particular--
neither among the rich nor the poor, the learned nor simple,
capitalists nor laborers; but the abstraction of these few from the
sum of national existence, though it would hardly be noticed in the
census, would produce a fatal languor, were the nation not
constantly receiving fresh blood from other countries.
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