My Lords, you might as well expect a man to be fit for a perfumer's shop, who has lain a month in a pig's stye, as to expect that a man who has been a contractor with the Company for a length of time is a fit person for reforming abuses.
Burke uses a vivid analogy to illustrate the unfitness of a person for reform based on their past actions.
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Whatever they are, I wish my countrymen rather to recommend to our neighbors the example of the British Constitution than to take models from them for the improvement of our own.
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…
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.
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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