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Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke by Edmund Burke
page 53 of 540 (09%)


DESPOTISM.

It is the nature of despotism to abhor power held by any means but its
own momentary pleasure; and to annihilate all intermediate situations
between boundless strength on its own part, and total debility on the
part of the people.


JUDGMENT AND POLICY.

Nothing can render this a point of indifference to the nation, but what
must either render us totally desperate, or sooth us into the security
of idiots. We must soften into a credulity below the milkiness of
infancy, to think all men virtuous. We must be tainted with a malignity
truly diabolical, to believe all the world to be equally wicked and
corrupt. Men are in public as in private, some good, some evil. The
elevation of the one, and the depression of the other, are the first
objects of all true policy. But that form of government, which, neither
in its direct institutions, nor in their immediate tendency, has
contrived to throw its affairs into the most trustworthy hands, but has
left its whole executory system to be disposed of agreeably to the
uncontrolled pleasures of any one man, however excellent or virtuous, is
a plan of polity defective not only in that member, but consequentially
erroneous in every part of it.


POPULAR DISCONTENT.

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