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Burke, Edmund, 1729-1797

"The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 04 (of 12)"

" This is an interesting topic, on which
I will, as fully as your leisure and mine permits, lay before you the
ideas I have formed.
First, I cannot possibly confound in my mind all the things which were
done at the Revolution with the _principles_ of the Revolution. As in
most great changes, many things were done from the necessities of the
time, well or ill understood, from passion or from vengeance, which were
not only not perfectly agreeable to its principles, but in the most
direct contradiction to them. I shall not think that the _deprivation of
some millions of people of all the rights of citizens, and all interest
in the Constitution, in and to which they were born_, was a thing
conformable to the _declared principles_ of the Revolution. This I am
sure is true relatively to England (where the operation of these
_anti-principles_ comparatively were of little extent); and some of our
late laws, in repealing acts made immediately after the Revolution,
admit that some things then done were not done in the true spirit of the
Revolution.


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