On the record
This secret under-current, as your Lordships will see, is to counteract everything, and, as fast as one part is rendered pure, totally to corrupt all the rest.
Said by
Edmund Burke
Source
gutenberg.orgEdmund Burke: “This secret under-current, as your Lordships will see, is to counteract everything, and, as fast as one part is rendered…”
Editor's note · Context
Burke describes a corrupting influence that undermines efforts to maintain purity within a committee.
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Jan 1, 1790
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.
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They will become flatterers instead of legislators,--the instruments, not the guides of the people.
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Let us add, if we please, but let us preserve what they have left; and standing on the firm ground of the British Constitution, let us be satisfied to admire, rather than attempt to follow in their desperate flights, the aëronauts of…
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If any of them should happen to propose a scheme of liberty soberly limited, and defined with proper qualifications, he will be immediately outbid by his competitors, who will produce something more splendidly popular.
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