If they are universally depraved, the commonwealth itself is not sound.
Edmund Burke: “If they are universally depraved, the commonwealth itself is not sound.”
Editor's note · Context
Burke warns that if the populace is universally depraved, the state itself cannot be healthy.
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But supposing they had ranked as they ought to do, and as with us they do actually, the sides of sick-beds are not the academies for forming statesmen and legislators.
A few years ago I should be ashamed to overload a matter so capable of supporting itself by the then unnecessary support of any argument; but this seditious, unconstitutional doctrine is now publicly taught, avowed, and printed.
A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.
But the king of Great Britain obeys no other person; all other persons are individually, and collectively too, under him, and owe to him a legal obedience.





