The anodyne draught of oblivion, thus drugged, is well calculated to preserve a galling wakefulness, and to feed the living ulcer of a corroding memory.
Edmund Burke: “The anodyne draught of oblivion, thus drugged, is well calculated to preserve a galling wakefulness, and to feed the…”
Editor's note · Context
Burke uses a vivid metaphor to describe how attempts to forget painful memories can paradoxically keep them alive and festering.
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They will become flatterers instead of legislators,--the instruments, not the guides of the people.
But when the leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of the state, will be of no service.
I would not exclude alteration neither; but even when I changed, it should be to preserve.
I think our happy situation owing to our Constitution,--but owing to the whole of it, and not to any part singly,--owing in a great measure to what we have left standing in our several reviews and reformations, as well as to what we have…





