When I find a great cry amongst the people who speculate little, I think myself called seriously to examine into it, and to separate the real cause from the ill effects of the passion it may excite, and the bad use which artful men may make of an irritation of the popular mind.
Burke expresses the need to investigate popular outcries to discern their true causes and effects.
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The prattling about the rights of men will not be accepted in payment of a biscuit or a pound of gunpowder.
To tell the people that they are relieved by the dilapidation of their public estate is a cruel and insolent imposition.
It is an evil inevitably attendant on the dominion of sovereign democratic republics.
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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