text:  How happens to be overlooked the advantage of this anti-progressive barrier to the concentration and deepening of the flood of opinion on any given subject? how is it that men are apt altogether to forget that this very barrier it is which prevents the too eager crowd from trampling one another to death in their haste? which gives time for the ebullitions of unreasoning zeal and reckless enthusiasm and the dregs of agitation quietly to subside; and for all that bears the impress of reason and sound sense to circulate with accumulated pressure through the public mind? Were it not for the barrier which the aristocracy of power thus interposes for a time only to withdraw when the time for interposition is past we should live in a vortex of revolution and counter-revolution