It would not be gross adulation, but uncivil irony, to say that he has any public merit of his own to keep alive the idea of the services by which his vast landed pensions were obtained.
Edmund Burke: “It would not be gross adulation, but uncivil irony, to say that he has any public merit of his own to keep alive the…”
Editor's note · Context
Burke asserts that it would be ironic to claim the Duke has any public merit that justifies his wealth from pensions.
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They will become flatterers instead of legislators,--the instruments, not the guides of the people.
They come from one who has been no tool of power, no flatterer of greatness, and who in his last acts does not wish to belie the tenor of his life.
I think our happy situation owing to our Constitution,--but owing to the whole of it, and not to any part singly,--owing in a great measure to what we have left standing in our several reviews and reformations, as well as to what we have…
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