“As to the power which money gives, it is that of brute force, it is the power of the bludgeon and the bayonet, and of the bribed press, tongue and pen.”

Letter 1, p. 36.
Advice to Young Men (1829)

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William Cobbett 58
English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist 1763–1835

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The Task of Social Hygiene, ch. 3 HTTP://BOOKS.GOOGLE.COM/books?id=nAoAAAAAYAAJ&q=%22charm+which+means+the+power+to+effect+work+without+employing+brute+force+is+indispensable+to+women+charm+is+a+woman%27s+strength+just+as+strength+is+a+man%27s+charm%22&pg=PA81#v=onepage

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“Power operates only destructively, bent always on forcing every manifestation of life into the straitjacket of its laws. Its intellectual form of expression is dead dogma, its physical form brute force.”

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Context: Power operates only destructively, bent always on forcing every manifestation of life into the straitjacket of its laws. Its intellectual form of expression is dead dogma, its physical form brute force. And this unintelligence of its objectives sets its stamp on its supporters also and renders them stupid and brutal, even when they were originally endowed with the best of talents. One who is constantly striving to force everything into a mechanical order at last becomes a machine himself and loses all human feeling.
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Context: All societies of men must be governed in some way or other. The less they may have of stringent State Government, the more they must have of individual self-government. The less they rely on public law or physical force, the more they must rely on private moral restraint. Men, in a word, must necessarily be controlled, either by a power within them, or by a power without them; either by the Word of God, or by the strong arm of man; either by the Bible, or by the bayonet. It may do for other countries and other governments to talk about the State supporting religion. Here, under our own free institutions, it is Religion which must support the State.

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