Athens, Rome, the Italian republics of the Middle Ages, the COMMUNES and states-general of feudal Europe, have all had a special and peculiar quickening influence, which they owed to their freedom, and which states without that freedom have never communicated.
Bagehot emphasizes the unique influence of free societies on intellectual development throughout history.
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They are above corruption because they are the corruptors.
And therefore party is inherent in it, is bone of its bone, and breath of its breath.
Savages waste away before modern civilisation; they seem to have held their ground before the ancient.
The power of free interchange of ideas being wanting, the ideas themselves were barren.
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