It signifies nothing whether we are wrong or right in the abstract; but in respect to our relation to Spain, with such principles followed up in practice, it is absolutely impossible that any cordial alliance can subsist between the two nations.
Burke highlights that the nature of relations with Spain affects the possibility of a cordial alliance.
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More from Edmund Burke
But an absurd theory on one side of a question forms no justification for alleging a false fact or promulgating mischievous maxims on the other.
A few years ago I should be ashamed to overload a matter so capable of supporting itself by the then unnecessary support of any argument; but this seditious, unconstitutional doctrine is now publicly taught, avowed, and printed.
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.
A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.
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