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Georges Duchêne, “Government” (1849-50)
Six thousand years of government have proven abundantly that power is, by its nature, spendthrift, prodigal, unproductive, invasive, despotic. Experience does not seem decisive for certain intelligences; and we are in the necessity, — if we do not want to attempt a new dictatorship, — of combatting the idea of authority, not by its historical antecedents, but in its very principle. […]