Quote of the Day (The Marquess of Salisbury, on ‘First-Rate Men’ and Mobs)

“First-rate men will not canvass mobs; and if they did, the mobs would not elect the first-rate men.”— British Conservative politician and Prime Minister Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903), “Democracy on Its Trial,” Quarterly Review (1861)

We shall see in this election here in the U.S. if shameless pandering to the mob will win out. In any case, it’s harder to be a “first-rate” man—or woman—in the current maddened environment.