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Burke, Edmund, 1729-1797

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


It will be a just and irresistible presumption against the fairness of
the interposing power, that he takes with him no party or description of
men in the divided state. It is not probable that these parties should
all, and all alike, be more adverse to the true interests of their
country, and less capable of forming a judgment upon them, than those
who are absolute strangers to their affairs, and to the character of the
actors in them, and have but a remote, feeble, and secondary sympathy
with their interest. Sometimes a calm and healing arbiter may be
necessary; but he is to compose differences, not to give laws. It is
impossible that any one should not feel the full force of that
presumption. Even people, whose politics for the supposed good of their
own country lead them to take advantage of the dissensions of a
neighboring nation in order to ruin it, will not directly propose to
exclude the natives, but they will take that mode of consulting and
employing them which most nearly approaches to an exclusion. In some
particulars they propose what amounts to that exclusion, in others they
do much worse.


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