I have only to wish that the nation may be as happy and as prosperous under the influence of the new light as it has been in the sober shade of the old obscurity.
Edmund Burke: “I have only to wish that the nation may be as happy and as prosperous under the influence of the new light as it has…”
Editor's note · Context
Burke expresses a hope for the nation's prosperity under new ideas, contrasting them with past obscurity.
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Let us add, if we please, but let us preserve what they have left; and standing on the firm ground of the British Constitution, let us be satisfied to admire, rather than attempt to follow in their desperate flights, the aëronauts of…
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.
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.





