Blowhard, Esq. writes:

There can be no more formidable symptom of our time, and none more menacing to popular government, than the growth of Irreconcilable bodies within the mass of the population. Church and State are alike convulsed by them; but, in civil life, Irreconcilables are associations of men who hold political opinions as men once held religious opinions. They cling to their creed with the same intensity of belief, the same immunity from doubt, the same confident expectation of blessedness to come quickly, which characterises the disciples of an infant faith. They are doubtless a product of democratic sentiment; they have borrowed from it its promise of a new and good time at hand, but they insist on the immediate redemption of the pledge, and they utterly refuse to wait until a popular majority gives effect to their opinions. Nor would the vote of such a majority have the least authority with them, if it sanctioned any departure from their principles.

— Henry Sumner Maine, Popular Government