Because half-a-dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring
with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed
beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent,
pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants
of the field; that of course they are many in number; or that, after
all, they are other than the little shrivelled, meagre, hopping, though
loud and troublesome insects of the hour.
-- Edmund Burke (1729-1797)
-- Reflections on the Revolution in France, Vol. iii, p. 344
