Her
father, with all his virtues, all his abilities, singleness of
purpose and simplicity of aim, encountered rivals in their own
Convention, and was beset by open or, still worse, secret
foes.
Sybil, whose mind had been nurtured with great thoughts, and
with whom success or failure alike partook of the heroic, who
had hoped for triumph, but who was prepared for sacrifice,
found to her surprise that great thoughts have very little to
do with the business of the world; that human affairs, even in
an age of revolution, are the subject of compromise; and that
the essence of compromise is littleness. She thought that the
People, calm and collected, conscious at last of their
strength and confident in their holy cause, had but to express
their pure and noble convictions by the delegates of their
choice, and that an antique and decrepid authority must bow
before the irresistible influence of their moral power. These
delegates of their choice turned out to be a plebeian senate
of wild ambitions and sinister and selfish ends, while the
decrepid authority that she had been taught existed only by
the sufferance of the millions was compact and organized, with
every element of physical power at its command, and supported
by the interests, the sympathies, the honest convictions, and
the strong prejudices of classes influential not merely from
their wealth but even by their numbers.
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