I am currently rereading Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and found this remarkable passage in the first para of chap. 3. It’s not the entire para because my typing skills are not that great but the relevant passage is:
“A martial nobility and stubborn commons, possessed of arms, tenacious of property, and collected into constitutional assemblies, form the only balance capable of preserving a free constitution against enterprises of an aspiring prince.”
To me that is a remarkable statement written by an Englishman in a history of the decline of a great empire.
We have the stubborn commons, but where is our martial nobility? That’s what our founders were. Where are they now?