Like all the rest of the great personages whom we have degraded and brutalized by insult and oppression, he betook himself to the usual destructive resources of unprincipled misery,--sensuality, opium, and wine.
Edmund Burke: “Like all the rest of the great personages whom we have degraded and brutalized by insult and oppression, he betook…”
Editor's note · Context
Burke reflects on the destructive effects of oppression on individuals, leading them to seek solace in vices.
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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.
Who could doubt but that, at any expense to the state, of which they understood nothing, they must pursue their private interests, which they understood but too well?
A few years ago I should be ashamed to overload a matter so capable of supporting itself by the then unnecessary support of any argument; but this seditious, unconstitutional doctrine is now publicly taught, avowed, and printed.
Governments must be abused and deranged indeed, before it can be thought of; and the prospect of the future must be as bad as the experience of the past.





