You have got the wolf by the ears, and I wish you joy of the happy position in which you have chosen to place yourselves, and in which you are well circumstanced for a free deliberation relatively to that army, or to anything else.
From his critique of the French Revolution, Burke uses a vivid metaphor to describe the precarious control the revolutionaries have over their military.
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Their objects would be enlarged with their elevation; but their disposition, and habits, and mode of accomplishing their designs must remain the same.
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.
If kings who did not owe their crown to the choice of their people had no title to make laws, what will become of the statute De tallagio non concedendo? of the Petition of Right? of the act of Habeas Corpus?
Who could conceive that men who are habitually meddling, daring, subtle, active, of litigious dispositions and unquiet minds, would easily fall back into their old condition of obscure contention, and laborious, low, and unprofitable…
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