He believed that they had taken up arms from one motive only: that is, our attempting to tax them without their consent,--to tax them for the purposes of maintaining civil and military establishments.
Burke identifies taxation without representation as the primary motivation for the American colonists' rebellion.
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Who but the most desperate adventurers in philosophy and finance could at all have thought of destroying the settled revenue of the state, the sole security for the public credit, in the hope of rebuilding it with the materials of…
The only difference among their financial factions is on the greater or the lesser quantity of assignats to be imposed on the public sufferance.
This was reserved to our time, to quench the little glimmerings of reason which might break in upon the solid darkness of this enlightened age.
In some people I see great liberty, indeed; in many, if not in the most, an oppressive, degrading servitude.
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