Every man in Great Britain will be contaminated and must be corrupted, if you let loose among us whole legions of men, generation after generation, tainted with these abominable vices, and avowing these detestable principles.
Burke expresses concern that the moral fabric of Britain will be harmed by the influence of corrupt individuals over generations.
Share
More from Edmund Burke
Who could flatter himself that these men, suddenly, and as it were by enchantment, snatched from the humblest rank of subordination, would not be intoxicated with their unprepared greatness?
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.
Governments must be abused and deranged indeed, before it can be thought of; and the prospect of the future must be as bad as the experience of the past.
If all the absurd theories of lawyers and divines were to vitiate the objects in which they are conversant, we should have no law and no religion left in the world.
Other voices in this conversation
