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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Ancient Regime by Charles Kingsley: whether at home or abroad. Thus, too, sprang up the system of
society by which (as the ballad sets forth) the squire's son might
be a "'prentice good," and marry
"The bailiff's daughter dear
That dwelt at Islington,"
without tarnishing, as he would have done on the Continent, the
scutcheon of his ancestors. That which has saved England from a
central despotism, such as crushed, during the eighteenth century,
every nation on the Continent, is the very same peculiarity which
makes the advent of the masses to a share in political power safe
and harmless; namely, the absence of caste, or rather (for there is
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