By such methods he acquired immense wealth, which he distributed with so politic a bounty among the seamen of his fleet and the legions in Britain that by degrees he disposed both the one and the other to a revolt in his favor.
Edmund Burke: “By such methods he acquired immense wealth, which he distributed with so politic a bounty among the seamen of his fleet…”
Editor's note · Context
Burke illustrates how Carausius gained wealth and loyalty through strategic distribution of resources, leading to potential revolt.
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The speculative line of demarcation, where obedience ought to end and resistance must begin, is faint, obscure, and not easily definable.
Who could conceive that men who are habitually meddling, daring, subtle, active, of litigious dispositions and unquiet minds, would easily fall back into their old condition of obscure contention, and laborious, low, and unprofitable…
Always acting as if in the presence of canonized forefathers, the spirit of freedom, leading in itself to misrule and excess, is tempered with an awful gravity.
But an absurd theory on one side of a question forms no justification for alleging a false fact or promulgating mischievous maxims on the other.





