Now a complete act of oblivion is passed about the Jacobins of England, though one would naturally imagine it would make a principal object in all fair deliberation upon the merits of a project of amity with the Jacobins of France.
Burke critiques the collective amnesia regarding the Jacobins in England, suggesting it undermines rational discourse.
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More from Edmund Burke
We procure reverence to our civil institutions on the principle upon which Nature teaches us to revere individual men: on account of their age, and on account of those from whom they are descended.
Those who are servants in name, as well as in effect, do not like to be told of their situation, their duty, and their obligations.
The engagement and pact of society, which generally goes by the name of the Constitution, forbids such invasion and such surrender.
But supposing they had ranked as they ought to do, and as with us they do actually, the sides of sick-beds are not the academies for forming statesmen and legislators.
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