We are at a fork in the road just now. One way takes us to a wholly new way of managing human affairs. It is a system I have helped, in my small way, to develop: the Royal Society, the Bank of England, Recoinage, the Whigs, and the Hanoverian Succession are all elements of it. The other way leads us to Versailles, and the rather different scheme that the King of France has got going there. I am not blind to the glories of the Sun King. I know Versailles is better than anything we have here, in many ways that count. But for every respect in which we are inferior to France, some compensation is
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