It is so instinctive and so strong that, if we watch
ourselves closely, we shall find it giving alarming shape sometimes to our
secret thoughts about our neighbors.
How many communities, how many households even, are without a tyrant? If
we could "move for returns of suffering," as that tender and thoughtful
man, Arthur Helps, says, we should find a far heavier aggregate of misery
inflicted by unsuspected, unresisted tyrannies than by those which are
patent to everybody, and sure to be overthrown sooner or later.
An exhaustive sermon on this subject should be set off in three divisions,
as follows:--
PRIVATE TYRANTS.
_1st._ Number of--
_2d._ Nature of--
_3d._ Longevity of--
_First_. Their number. They are not enumerated in any census. Not even the
most painstaking statistician has meddled with the topic. Fancy takes bold
leaps at the very suggestion of such an estimate, and begins to think at
once of all things in the universe which are usually mentioned as beyond
numbering. Probably one good way of getting at a certain sort of result
would be to ask each person of one's acquaintance, "Do you happen to know
a private tyrant?"
How well we know beforehand the replies we should get from _some_ beloved
men and women,--that is, if they spoke the truth!
But they would not.
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