Let me add, that the great inlet by which a color for oppression has entered into the world is by one man's pretending to determine concerning the happiness of another, and by claiming a right to use what means he thinks proper in order to bring him to a sense of it.
Burke warns against the dangers of one person claiming authority over another's happiness.
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More from Edmund Burke
There are some follies which baffle argument, which go beyond ridicule, and which excite no feeling in us but disgust; and therefore I say no more upon it.
It is an evil inevitably attendant on the dominion of sovereign democratic republics.
To tell the people that they are relieved by the dilapidation of their public estate is a cruel and insolent imposition.
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