Laudator Temporis Acti

M.I. Finley, "Leaders and Followers," in his Democracy Ancient and Modern, 2nd ed. (London: The Hogarth Press, 1985), pp. 3-37 (at 4, with note on p. 173):

Or when Aristotle (Politics, 1319al9-38) argued that the best democracy will be in a state with a large rural hinterland and a relatively numerous population of farmers and herdsmen, who "are scattered over the country, do not meet together so often or feel the need of assembling," one feels a kinship with a contemporary political scientist, W.H. Morris Jones, who wrote, in an article with the revealing title, "In Defence of Apathy," that "many of the ideas connected with the general theme of a Duty to Vote belong properly to the totalitarian camp and are out of place in the vocabulary of liberal democracy"; that political apathy is a "sign of understanding and tolerance of human variety" and has a "beneficial effect on the tone of political life" because it is a "more or less effective counter-force to the fanatics who constitute the real danger to liberal democracy."³

3. Political Studies, 2 (1954) 25-37, at pp. 25 and 37, respectively.