Politics & Power Quote by Thomas Babington

“Not broken in from birth” lands like a whip crack: Babington frames political obedience as animal training, not civic virtue. The line isn’t just anti-government; it’s anti-infantalization. “Paternal” is instantly translated into “meddling,” stripping the comforting metaphor of fatherhood down to its coercive core. The intent is to make paternalism sound less like care and more like trespass: the state entering the intimate spaces where identity is made - reading, speech, diet, dress. Those details matter because they’re not abstract rights-talk; they’re daily rituals. Control the menu and the wardrobe and you don’t merely govern behavior, you manufacture temperament.

The subtext is classed and historically specific. Early-19th-century Britain is wrestling with reform, industrialization, public order, and a growing administrative state. A “paternal” government is also the voice of magistrates, censors, temperance crusaders, and moral reformers - the respectable classes using policy to sculpt the habits of everyone else. Babington’s “galling” suggests humiliation more than hardship: the insult is being treated like a child when you’re capable of self-rule.

Calling this “galling” to people “not broken in” also hints at a comparative politics argument: some populations, conditioned by long submission, may accept intrusion as normal. Liberty here is less a philosophical abstraction than an acquired taste - and paternal government is depicted as the force that tries to keep citizens from developing it. The line works because it weaponizes the cozy language of care, revealing how easily “for your own good” becomes “because I said so.”