There is a salient living principle of energy in the public mind of England, which only requires proper direction to enable her to withstand this, or any other ferocious foe.
Edmund Burke: “There is a salient living principle of energy in the public mind of England, which only requires proper direction to…”
Editor's note · Context
Burke identifies a powerful, untapped energy within the English public that can be directed against threats.
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The engagement and pact of society, which generally goes by the name of the Constitution, forbids such invasion and such surrender.
Who could doubt but that, at any expense to the state, of which they understood nothing, they must pursue their private interests, which they understood but too well?
So far is it from being true that we acquired a right by the Revolution to elect our kings, that, if we had possessed it before, the English nation did at that time most solemnly renounce and abdicate it, for themselves, and for all their…
Always acting as if in the presence of canonized forefathers, the spirit of freedom, leading in itself to misrule and excess, is tempered with an awful gravity.





