Many of the persons, who in all times have filled the great offices of state, have been younger brothers, who had originally little, if any, fortune.
Edmund Burke: “Many of the persons, who in all times have filled the great offices of state, have been younger brothers, who had…”
Editor's note · Context
Burke notes that many influential state officials have come from less wealthy backgrounds.
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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…
The ceremony of cashiering kings, of which these gentlemen talk so much at their ease, can rarely, if ever, be performed without force.
By adhering in this manner and on those principles to our forefathers, we are guided, not by the superstition of antiquarians, but by the spirit of philosophic analogy.
When such an unwarrantable maxim is once established, that no throne is lawful but the elective, no one act of the princes who preceded this era of fictitious election can be valid.





