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It was pitiful for a person born in a wholesome free atmosphere to listen to their humble and hearty outpourings of loyalty toward their king and Church and nobility; as if they had any more occasion to love and honor king and Church and noble than a slave has to love and honor the lash, or a dog has to love and honor the stranger that kicks him! Why, dear me, ANY kind of royalty, howsoever modified, ANY kind of aristocracy, howsoever pruned, is rightly an insult; but if you are born and brought up under that sort of arrangement you probably never find it out for yourself, and don't believe it when somebody else tells you. It is enough to make a body ashamed of his race to think of the sort of froth that has always occupied its thrones without shadow of right or reason, and the seventh-rate people that have always figured as its aristocracies -- a company of monarchs and nobles who, as a rule, would have achieved only poverty and obscurity if left, like their betters, to their own exertions... The truth was, the nation as a body was in the world for one object, and one only: to grovel before king and Church and noble; to slave for them, sweat blood for them, starve that they might be fed, work that they might play, drink misery to the dregs that they might be happy, go naked that they might wear silks and jewels, pay taxes that they might be spared from paying them, be familiar all their lives with the degrading language and postures of adulation that they might walk in pride and think themselves the gods of this world. And for all this, the thanks they got were cuffs and contempt; and so poor-spirited were they that they took even this sort of attention as an honor.


Mark Twain


#government #monarchy #religion #serfdom #slavery



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But I have thought some more since then and I have read carefully the treaty of Paris [which ended the Spanish-American War] and I have seen that we do not intend to free but to subjugate the people of the Philippines. There were three versions found in his manuscripts made between 1897 and 1905: the Hannibal Eseldorf and Print Shop versions. He did state that "the goodness the justice and the mercy of God are manifested in His works" but also that "the universe is governed by strict and immutable laws" which determine "small matters" such as who dies in a pestilence.

Twain chose to pay all his pre-bankruptcy creditors in full though he had no responsibility to do this under the law. He also worked as a typesetter and contributed articles to his older brother Orion's newspaper. He achieved great success as a writer and public speaker.

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