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The Life of Samuel Johnson

Boswell, James | University of Oxford, 1960

 

p. 423

Boswell quotes Johnson: “Providence has wisely ordered that the more numerous men are, the more difficult it is for them to agree in anything, and so they are governed. There is no doubt, that if the poor should reason, ‘We’ll be the poor no longer, we’ll make the rich take their turn,’ they could easily do it, were it not that they can’t agree. So the common soldiers, though so much more numerous than their officers, are governed by them for the same reason.