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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Historical Lecturers and Essays by Charles Kingsley: should choose some corrupt and effete despotism, already grown weak
and ridiculous by its decay--as did at last the Roman and then the
Byzantine Empire--and, after raising a laugh at the expense of the
old system say: See what a superior people you are now--how
impossible, under free and enlightened institutions, is anything so
base and so absurd as went on, even in despotic France before the
Revolution of 1793. Well, that would be on the whole true, thank
God; but what need is there to say it?
Let us keep our scorn for our own weaknesses, our blame for our own
sins, certain that we shall gain more instruction, though not more
amusement, by hunting out the good which is in anything than by
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