Speculative plunder,--contingent spoil,--future, long adjourned, uncertain booty,--pillage which must enrich a late posterity, and which possibly may not reach to posterity at all,--these, for any length of time, will never support a mercenary war.
Burke critiques the concept of speculative gains in warfare, arguing they are unsustainable.
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More from Edmund Burke
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 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…
I would not exclude alteration neither; but even when I changed, it should be to preserve.
They will become flatterers instead of legislators,--the instruments, not the guides of the people.
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