"Our authorities leave us no doubt that the trust lodged with the oligarchy was sometimes abused, but it certainly ought not to be regarded as a mere usurpation or engine of tyranny"
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Maine is doing something slyly conservative here: conceding just enough wrongdoing to keep his credibility, then quietly insulating oligarchy from the moral language that would make it politically radioactive. The sentence is built like a legal brief. “Our authorities” invokes a court of record, not a street protest; the argument belongs to the archive, where power is weighed in precedents and footnotes rather than outrage. “Leave us no doubt” sounds like candor, but it also shuts down debate by treating interpretation as settled fact.
The key move is the pivot from “sometimes abused” to “certainly ought not.” Abuse is admitted as episodic, almost accidental, while the remedy is categorical: don’t misname the institution. “Trust lodged” recasts oligarchic rule as fiduciary stewardship, a burden carried for the community, not a seizure carried out against it. That’s Maine’s signature posture as a Victorian historian of institutions: legitimacy is located in gradual social evolution and inherited arrangements, not in popular consent alone.
Context matters. Writing in an age when “tyranny” and “usurpation” were increasingly democratic accusations aimed at aristocratic privilege, Maine supplies an intellectual counterweight: elite rule can be historically functional even when morally messy. The subtext is a warning against anachronism. Judge oligarchy as a stage in political development, not as a villain in a modern morality play. It’s an argument that defends hierarchy less by praising it than by disciplining the reader’s vocabulary.
The key move is the pivot from “sometimes abused” to “certainly ought not.” Abuse is admitted as episodic, almost accidental, while the remedy is categorical: don’t misname the institution. “Trust lodged” recasts oligarchic rule as fiduciary stewardship, a burden carried for the community, not a seizure carried out against it. That’s Maine’s signature posture as a Victorian historian of institutions: legitimacy is located in gradual social evolution and inherited arrangements, not in popular consent alone.
Context matters. Writing in an age when “tyranny” and “usurpation” were increasingly democratic accusations aimed at aristocratic privilege, Maine supplies an intellectual counterweight: elite rule can be historically functional even when morally messy. The subtext is a warning against anachronism. Judge oligarchy as a stage in political development, not as a villain in a modern morality play. It’s an argument that defends hierarchy less by praising it than by disciplining the reader’s vocabulary.
Quote Details
| Topic | Justice |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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