"Unless it be for me

"Unless it be for metaphysics and moral philosophy, perhaps the least progressive of all human sciences is the science of government. Just as we are today no nearer to a solution of the great questions with which Eliphaz the Temanite vexed the soul of the afflicted patriarch, so are we far from solving the political problems with which pericles wrestled, and which Plato and Aristotle attempted in vain to demonstrate. Among the modern autocracies of Europe we find no such administrative faculty as was displayed by Philip of Macedon; nor in the annals of the Athenian Republic do we find such crudities of legislation as those which deface our own, such abominations, for instance as the poll-tax, the tax on works of art and libraries, and other relics of a by-gone age." Hubert Howe Bancroft 1893 - some things never change :-)