Civil unrest from "summary" of The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain
Civil unrest is a tempest that may come in a night, as any man may know who reads the chronicles of every land. A little thing, in the beginning, it may be, but it is like a snowball rolling down a mountain, and it may grow larger and larger, and still larger, till it is like a mighty avalanche, devastating that land and burying it beneath a mountain of ruin. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty. And so it was in that time of old, when the people rose against the rulers who oppressed them, and demanded their rights as men. The streets were filled with men and women, shouting and clamoring for justice, for bread to eat, for freedom from the chains that bound them. The rich man looked out from his palace, and saw the flames of burning houses, and heard the cries of the starving poor, and he trembled in his heart, for he knew that the day of reckoning had come. The Prince himself saw the tumult and the strife, and he marveled at the power of the people, and he knew that he must choose between his crown and his people, between his pride and his duty. And so it was that the Prince put off his royal robes, and dressed himself in the garments of a beggar, and went forth into the streets, to learn the ways of men, and to feel the pulse of that great heart that beat beneath the rags and tatters of the poor. And he found that the people were not so base and vile as he had thought, but that they had hearts and souls like his own, and that they had been driven to madness by the wrongs and injustices that had been heaped upon them. And so it was that the Prince came back to his palace, and called his counselors around him, and told them that he would be no longer a tyrant, but a shepherd of his people, a father to the fatherless, a defender of the weak and the oppressed. And he made laws for the good of the realm, and he saw that they were carried out, and he ruled his kingdom with justice and mercy, and the people loved him, and blessed him, and called him the Prince of Peace.
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