An arbitrary system, indeed, must always be a corrupt one.
Edmund Burke: “An arbitrary system, indeed, must always be a corrupt one.”
Editor's note · Context
Burke claimed that any arbitrary system inherently leads to corruption.
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The people of England will not ape the fashions they have never tried, nor go back to those which they have found mischievous on trial.
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Ill would our ancestors at the Revolution have deserved their fame for wisdom, if they had found no security for their freedom, but in rendering their government feeble in its operations and precarious in its tenure,--if they had been able…
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