The Works of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke: With a Biographical and Critical Introduction, and Portrait After Sir Joshua Reynolds, Volume 2

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Holdsworth and Ball, 1834 - Great Britain

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Page 319 - And turn the unwilling steeds another way ; Benighted wanderers, the forest o'er, Curse the saved candle and unopening door ; . While the gaunt mastiff, growling at the gate, Affrights the beggar whom he longs to eat.
Page 268 - British monarchy, not more limited than fenced by the orders of the state, shall, like the proud Keep of Windsor, rising in the majesty of proportion, and girt with the double belt of its kindred and coeval towers...
Page 268 - But let him take care how he endangers the safety of that constitution which secures his own utility or his own insignificance ; or how he discourages those, who take up, even puny arms, to defend an order of things, which, like the sun of heaven, shines alike on the useful and the worthless. His grants are engrafted on the publick law of Europe, covered with the awful hoar of innumerable ages.
Page 269 - As long as our sovereign lord the king, and his faithful subjects the Lords and commons of this realm, the triple cord which no man can break; the solemn sworn constitutional frankpledge of this nation; the firm guarantees of each other's being, and each other's rights; the joint and several securities, each in its place and order for every kind and every quality of property and of dignity...
Page 364 - In the corrupted currents of this world Offence's gilded hand may shove by justice, And oft 'tis seen the wicked prize itself Buys out the law; but 'tis not so above; There is no shuffling, there the action lies In his true nature, and we ourselves compell'd Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults To give in evidence.
Page 268 - ... to resort to any stagnant, wasting reservoir of merit in me, or in any ancestry. He had in himself a salient, living spring of generous and manly action. Every day he lived he would have repurchased the bounty of the Crown, and ten times more, if ten times more he had received. He was made a public creature, and had no enjoyment whatever but in the performance of some duty. At this exigent moment, the loss of a finished man is not easily supplied.
Page 270 - It comes nearer to the cold malignity of a wicked spirit than to the frailty and passion of a man. It is like that of the principle of evil himself, incorporeal, pure, unmixed, dephlegmated, defecated evil.
Page 263 - Nitor in adversum" is the motto for a man like me. I possessed not one of the qualities, nor cultivated one of the arts, that recommend men to the favor and protection of the great. I was not made for a minion or a tool. As little did I follow the trade of winning the hearts, by imposing on the understandings, of the people. At every step of my progress in life (for in every step was I traversed and opposed) and at every turnpike I met, I was...
Page 265 - In that way of putting things together his Grace is perfectly in the right. The grants to the house of Russell were so enormous, as not only to outrage economy, but even to stagger credibility. The Duke of Bedford is the leviathan among all the creatures of the Crown. He tumbles about his unwieldy bulk ; he plays and frolics in the ocean of the royal bounty. Huge as he is, and whilst "he lies floating many a rood,
Page 268 - ... in generosity, in humanity, in every liberal sentiment, and every liberal accomplishment, would not have shown himself inferior to the Duke of Bedford, or to any of those whom he traces in his line.

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