QotD: On "how great states may be made feeble and wretched"

"Macaulay advised those who wished ‘to be well-acquainted with the morbid anatomy of governments’ to study the history of Spain in the seventeenth century;1 some modern historians would advise those who wish ‘to know how great states may be made feeble and wretched’ to study the history of modern [twentieth-century] Britain."
~ John Charmley, from his 1999 book 'Chamberlain and the Lost Peace'

.
.