Content
Supposing the number of “Contents” and “Not contents” strictly equal in number and consequence.
Edmund Burke
Statesman and philosopher, 1729-1797
Cited as Burke. — 404 quotations
Abandonment
The abandonment of the independence of Europe.
Abdicate
He abdicates all right to be his own governor.
Though a king may abdicate for his own person, he cannot abdicate for the monarchy.
Abhorrent
The persons most abhorrent from blood and treason.
Abrogate
Whose laws, like those of the Medes and Persian, they can not alter or abrogate.
Abyss
In unfathomable abysses of disgrace.
Action
The Euripus of funds and actions.
Adjutancy
It was, no doubt, disposed with all the adjutancy of definition and division.
Adulatory
A mere rant of adulatory freedom.
Adventitious
To things of great dimensions, if we annex an adventitious idea of terror, they become without comparison greater.
Advocate
This is the only thing distinct and sensible, that has been advocated.
Aggregation
A nation is not an idea only of local extent and individual momentary aggregation, but . . . of continuity, which extends in time as well as in numbers, and in space.
Agrarian
His Grace's landed possessions are irresistibly inviting to an agrarian experiment.
Alchemistic
Metaphysical and alchemistical legislators.
Alternative
There is something else than the mere alternative of absolute destruction or unreformed existence.
Amalgama
They divided this their amalgama into a number of incoherent republics.
Amalgamate
Ingratitude is indeed their four cardinal virtues compacted and amalgamated into one.
Ambition
The pitiful ambition of possessing five or six thousand more acres.
Anglican
Whether Catholics, Anglicans, or Calvinists.
Annals
It was one of the most critical periods in our annals.
Annul
Do they mean to annul laws of inestimable value to our liberties?
Anodyne
The anodyne draught of oblivion.
Anomaly
We are enabled to unite into a consistent whole the various anomalies and contending principles that are found in the minds and affairs of men.
Ape
The people of England will not ape the fashions they have never tried.
Approximate
To approximate the inequality of riches to the level of nature.
Apt
They have always apt instruments.
Ascertainment
The positive ascertainment of its limits.
Assort
They appear . . . no ways assorted to those with whom they must associate.
Assuage
To assuage the sorrows of a desolate old man
August
So beautiful and so august a spectacle.
Auspicate
They auspicate all their proceedings.
Authenticate
The king serves only as a notary to authenticate the choice of judges.
Backstairs
A backstairs influence.
Barbarize
The hideous changes which have barbarized France.
Barter
The spirit of huckstering and barter.
Bayonet
To bayonet us into submission.
Beautify
The arts that beautify and polish life.
Bemire
Bemired and benighted in the dog.
Benefit
Men have no right to what is not for their benefit.
Betake
They betook themselves to treaty and submission.
Bluster
Your ministerial directors blustered like tragic tyrants.
Bolt
The report of the committee was examined and sifted and bolted to the bran.
Bombard
Next, she means to bombard Naples.
Bombastic
A theatrical, bombastic, windy phraseology.
Bond
A people with whom I have no tie but the common bond of mankind.
Bridle
Savoy and Nice, the keys of Italy, and the citadel in her hands to bridle Switzerland, are in that consolidation.
Broil
I will own that there is a haughtiness and fierceness in human nature which will which will cause innumerable broils, place men in what situation you please.
Buffet
Those planks of tough and hardy oak that used for yeas to brave the buffets of the Bay of Biscay.
Buoy
Those old prejudices, which buoy up the ponderous mass of his nobility, wealth, and title.
Burlesque
Who is it that admires, and from the heart is attached to, national representative assemblies, but must turn with horror and disgust from such a profane burlesque and abominable perversion of that sacred institute?
Burrow
Sir, this vermin of court reporters, when they are forced into day upon one point, are sure to burrow in another.
Buttress
To set it upright again, and to prop and buttress it up for duration.
Calamity
The deliberations of calamity are rarely wise.
Calculative
Long habits of calculative dealings.
Calculator
Ambition is no exact calculator.
Canvass
No previous canvass was made for me.
Capitalist
The expenditure of the capitalist.
Captive
Their inhabitans slaughtered and captived.
Cause
The part they take against me is from zeal to the cause.
Channel
At best, he is but a channel to convey to the National assembly such matter as may import that body to know.
Chastiser
The chastiser of the rich.
Check
So many clogs to check and retard the headlong course of violence and oppression.
Cherish
To cherish virtue and humanity.
Chicane
To shuffle from them by chicane.
Clan
The whole clan of the enlightened among us.
Clerk
He was no great clerk, but he was perfectly well versed in the interests of Europe.
Cliental
A dependent and cliental relation.
climb-down
I should hardly yield my rigid fibers to be regenerated by them; nor begin, in my grand climacteric, to squall in their new accents, or to stammer, in my second cradle, the elemental sounds of their barbarous metaphysics.
Clog
All the ancient, honest, juridical principles and institutions of England are so many clogs to check and retard the headlong course of violence and opression.
Coalite
Time has by degrees blended . . . and coalited the conquered with the conquerors.
Coarseness
A coarseness and vulgarity in all the proceedings.
Cockade
Seduced by military liveries and cockades.
Cohere
They have been inserted where they best seemed to cohere.
Cold
No cold relation is a zealous citizen.
Collude
If they let things take their course, they will be represented as colluding with sedition.
Commemoration
The commonwealth which . . . chooses the most flagrant act of murderous regicide treason for a feast of eternal commemoration.
Commonage
The claim of commonage . . . in most of the forests.
Commutative
Rich traders, from their success, are presumed . . . to have cultivated an habitual regard to commutative justice.
Compensation
No pecuniary compensation can possibly reward them.
Competence
The loan demonstrates, in regard to instrumental resources, the competency of this kingdom to the assertion of the common cause.
To make them act zealously is not in the competence of law.
Complacent
They look up with a sort of complacent awe . . . to kings.
Complexional
A moral rather than a complexional timidity.
Complexionally
Though corruptible, not complexionally vicious.
Complexity
The objects of society are of the greatest possible complexity.
Comport
Observe how Lord Somers . . . comported himself.
Compromise
All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter.
Compulsory
This contribution threatening to fall infinitely short of their hopes, they soon made it compulsory.
Con
I did not come into Parliament to con my lesson.
Concede
We concede that their citizens were those who lived under different forms.
I wished you to concede to America, at a time when she prayed concession at our feet.
Concert
A commander had more trouble to concert his defense before the people than to plan . . . the campaign.
Conciliation
The house has gone further; it has declared conciliation admissible previous to any submission on the part of America.
Concurrence
An instinct that works us to its own purposes without our concurrence.
Conduit
This is the fountain of all those bitter waters, of which, through a hundred different conduits, we have drunk.
Connive
In many of these, the directors were heartily concurring; in most of them, they were encouraging, and sometimes commanding; in all they were conniving.
Conservation
A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.
Consignment
To increase your consignments of this valuable branch of national commerce.
Consolatory
The punishment of tyrants is a noble and awful act of justice; and it has with truth been said to be consolatory to the human mind.
Consumption
Every new advance of the price to the consumer is a new incentive to him to retrench the quality of his consumption.
Contemptible
The arguments of tyranny are ascontemptible as its force is dreadful.
Contingent
Weighing so much actual crime against so much contingent advantage.
Contortion
All the contortions of the sibyl, without the inspiration.
Contraband
Persons the most bound in duty to prevent contraband, and the most interested in the seizures.
The contraband will always keep pace, in some measure, with the fair trade.
Contradiction
We state our experience and then we come to a manly resolution of acting in contradiction to it.
Contribute
We are engaged in war; the secretary of state calls upon the colonies to contribute.
Contrivance
Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants.
Contumely
Nothing aggravates tyranny so much as contumely.
Convertibility
The mutual convertibility of land into money, and of money into land.
Convulsive
An irregular, convulsive movement may be necessary to throw off an irregular, convulsive disease.
Corruptible
They systematically corrupt very corruptible race.
Cowardly
The cowardly rashness of those who dare not look danger in the face.
Cramp
The . . . fabric of universal justic is well cramped and bolted together in all its parts.
Criminate
To criminate, with the heavy and ungrounded charge of disloyalty and disaffection, an uncorrupt, independent, and reforming parliament.
Critical
Our circumstances are indeed critical.
Croise
The conquests of the croises extending over Palestine.
Cultivate
I ever looked on Lord Keppel as one of the greatest and best men of his age; and I loved and cultivated him accordingly.
Cycle
Wages . . . bear a full proportion . . . to the medium of provision during the last bad cycle of twenty years.
Debauch
Learning not debauched by ambition.
Debauchery
The republic of Paris will endeavor to complete the debauchery of the army.
Decency
Observances of time, place, and of decency in general.
decent
A decent retreat in the mutability of human affairs.
decollate
The decollated head of St. John the Baptist.
Defalcate
To show what may be practicably and safely defalcated from them [the estimates].
defy
I defy the enemies of our constitution to show the contrary.
Delude
To delude the nation by an airy phantom.
Demarcation
The speculative line of demarcation, where obedience ought to end and resistance must begin, is faint, obscure, and not easily definable.
Demerit
They see no merit or demerit in any man or any action.
Denomination
Those [qualities] which are classed under the denomination of sublime.
Denunciate
To denunciate this new work.
Depend
You will not think it unnatural that those who have an object depending, which strongly engages their hopes and fears, should be somewhat inclined to superstition.
Dependence
Reduced to a servile dependence on their mercy.
Deplorable
Individual sufferers are in a much more deplorable conditious than any others.
Depreciate
To prove that the Americans ought not to be free, we are obliged to depreciate the value of freedom itself.
Derelict
They easily prevailed, so as to seize upon the vacant, unoccupied, and derelict minds of his [Chatham's] friends; and instantly they turned the vessel wholly out of the course of his policy.
Dereliction
Cession or dereliction, actual or tacit, of other powers.
Derogate
It derogates little from his fortitude, while it adds infinitely to the honor of his humanity.
Descendant
The descendant of so many kings and emperors.
Deserve
Encouragement is not held out to things that deserve reprehension.
Design
Ask of politicians the end for which laws were originally designed.
Destitute
Totally destitute of all shadow of influence.
Detect
Plain good intention . . . is as easily discovered at the first view, as fraud is surely detected at last.
Detestation
We are heartily agreed in our detestation of civil war.
Devolve
They devolved a considerable share of their power upon their favorite.
Diffusion
A diffusion of knowledge which has undermined superstition.
Digest
They made a sort of institute and digest of anarchy, called the Rights of Man.
Dilapidation
Tell the people that are relived by the dilapidation of their public estate.
Directorial
Whoever goes to the directorial presence under this passport.
Disadvantage
I was brought here under the disadvantage of being unknown by sight to any of you.
Disapprobation
We have ever expressed the most unqualified disapprobation of all the steps.
Disconnect
The commonwealth itself would . . . be disconnected into the dust and powder of individuality.
Disconnection
Nothing was therefore to be left in all the subordinate members but weakness, disconnection, and confusion.
Discord
Peace to arise out of universal discord fomented in all parts of the empire.
Disgustful
That horrible and disgustful situation.
Disobedient
This disobedient spirit in the colonies.
Disorder
Disordering the whole frame or jurisprudence.
Dispensation
To respect the dispensations of Providence.
Display
His statement . . . displays very clearly the actual condition of the army.
Displume
Displumed, degraded, and metamorphosed.
Disposable
The great of this kingdom . . . has easily afforded a disposable surplus.
Disrelish
Men love to hear of their power, but have an extreme disrelish to be told of their duty.
Dissent
It is the dissidence of dissent and the protestantism of the Protestant religion.
Dissenter
Dissenters from the establishment of their several countries.
Dissidence
It is the dissidence of dissent.
Dissociation
It will add infinitely dissociation, distraction, and confusion of these confederate republics.
Disturb
The utmost which the discontented colonies could do, was to disturb authority.
Disturbance
Any man . . . in a state of disturbance and irritation.
Domination
In such a people, the haughtiness of domination combines with the spirit of freedom.
Dormancy
It is by lying dormant a long time, or being . . . very rarely exercised, that arbitrary power steals upon a people.
Dovetail
He put together a piece of joinery so crossly indented and whimsically dovetailed . . . that it was indeed a very curious show.
Drapery
All the decent drapery of life is to be rudely torn off.
draw
We do not draw the moral lessons we might from history.
Dribblet
When made up in dribblets, as they could, their best securities were at an interest of twelve per cent.
duplicity
Far from the duplicity wickedly charged on him, he acted his part with alacrity and resolution.
Duress
The agreements . . . made with the landlords during the time of slavery, are only the effect of duress and force.
Early
Early and provident fear is the mother of safety.
Earn
The bread I have earned by the hazard of my life or the sweat of my brow.
Earning
As to the common people, their stock is in their persons and in their earnings.
Easement
In need of every kind of relief and easement.
Effete
If they find the old governments effete, worn out, . . . they may seek new ones.
Elector
In favor of the electoral and other princes.
Eligible
The more eligible of the two evils.
Embody
Firmly to embody against this court party.
Emerge
Those who have emerged from very low, some from the lowest, classes of society.
Emergent
Protection granted in emergent danger.
Eminence
The temple of honor ought to be seated on an eminence.
Endanger
All the other difficulties of his reign only exercised without endangering him.
Enforce
Enforcing sentiment of the thrust humanity.
Equalization
Their equalization with the rest of their fellow subjects.
Equipoise
The means of preserving the equipoise and the tranquillity of the commonwealth.
Escort
The troops of my escort marched at the ordinary rate.
Establish
The best established tempers can scarcely forbear being borne down.
Evacuate
The Norwegians were forced to evacuate the country.
Executory
The official and executory duties of government.
Expatriate
The expatriated landed interest of France.
Expenditure
Our expenditure purchased commerce and conquest.
Expensive
War is expensive, and peace desirable.
Explicable
It is not explicable upon any grounds.
Explode
Old exploded contrivances of mercantile fraud.
Facility
The facility with which government has been overturned in France.
Factious
Headlong zeal or factious fury.
Famish
He had famished Paris into a surrender.
Farm
The province was devided into twelve farms.
To farm their subjects and their duties toward these.
Fast
There is an order that keeps things fast.
Favorable
The favorableness of the present times to all exertions in the cause of liberty.
Feasible
Always existing before their eyes as a thing feasible in practice.
Feel
[She] feels with the dignity of a Roman matron.
Fit
The time is fitted for the duty.
Flashy
A temper always flashy.
Flattery
Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver.
Flippant
A sort of flippant, vain discourse.
Forefather
Respecting your forefathers, you would have been taught to respect yourselves.
Foresight
A random expense, without plan or foresight.
Forfeit
[They] had forfeited their property by their crimes.
Form
The diplomatic politicians . . . who formed by far the majority.
Fortition
No mode of election operating in the spirit of fortition or rotation can be generally good.
Fragility
An appearance of delicacy, and even of fragility, is almost essential to it [beauty].
Fraternization
I hope that no French fraternization . . . could so change the hearts of Englishmen.
Fraternize
Correspondence for fraternizing the two nations.
Frugality
Frugality is founded on the principle that all riches have limits.
Fruit
What I obtained was the fruit of no bargain.
Fuscous
Sad and fuscous colors, as black or brown, or deep purple and the like.
Gauge
The gauge and dimensions of misery, depression, and contempt.
Gloom
A sullen gloom and furious disorder prevailed by fits.
grantee
His grace will not survive the poor grantee he despises.
Gravity
They derive an importance from . . . the gravity of the place where they were uttered.
Green
As valid against such an old and beneficent government as against . . . the greenest usurpation.
Gross
For the gross of the people, they are considered as a mere herd of cattle.
Guise
A . . . specter, in a far more terrific guise than any which ever yet have overpowered the imagination.
Hackle
The other divisions of the kingdom being hackled and torn to pieces.
Hard
I never could drive a hard bargain.
Hoar
Covered with the awful hoar of innumerable ages.
Humorsome
The commons do not abet humorsome, factious arms.
Identify
Let us identify, let us incorporate ourselves with the people.
An enlightened self-interest, which, when well understood, they tell us will identify with an interest more enlarged and public.
Illicit
One illicit . . . transaction always leads to another.
Imperceptible
Its operation is slow, and in some cases almost imperceptible.
Impolitic
The most unjust and impolitic of all things, unequal taxation.
Import
I take the imports from, and not the exports to, these conquests, as the measure of these advantages which we derived from them.
Inclining
On the first inclining towards sleep.
Incoming
A full incoming profit on the product of his labor.
Incommensurable
They are quantities incommensurable.
Incurable
Rancorous and incurable hostility.
Indecision
Indecision . . . is the natural accomplice of violence.
Indecorous
It was useless and indecorous to attempt anything more by mere struggle.
Indefensible
Men find that something can be said in favor of what, on the very proposal, they thought utterly indefensible.
Indemnification
Indemnification is capable of some estimate; dignity has no standard.
Indigested
In hot reformations . . . the whole is generally crude, harsh, and indigested.
Inefficacious
The authority of Parliament must become inefficacious . . . to restrain the growth of disorders.
Inertness
Laziness and inertness of mind.
Inevitable
It was inevitable; it was necessary; it was planted in the nature of things.
Inexpiable
They are at inexpiable war with all establishments.
Inexplicable
Their reason is disturbed; their views become vast and perplexed, to others inexplicable, to themselves uncertain.
Infamously
The sealed fountain of royal bounty which had been infamously monopolized and huckstered.
Infantine
A degree of credulity next infantine.
Inferable
A sufficient argument . . . is inferable from these premises.
Inferior
The body, or, as some love to call it, our inferior nature.
Informant
It was the last evidence of the kind; the informant was hanged.
Ingraft
A custom . . . ingrafted into the monarchy of Rome.
Inimical
We are at war with a system, which, by its essence, is inimical to all other governments.
Iniquitous
Demagogues . . . bribed to this iniquitous service.
Injustice
If this people [the Athenians] resembled Nero in their extravagance, much more did they resemble and even exceed him in cruelty and injustice.
Insecurity
A time of insecurity, when interests of all sorts become objects of speculation.
Institute
They made a sort of institute and digest of anarchy.
Instrumentally
They will argue that the end being essentially beneficial, the means become instrumentally so.
Insurrectionary
Their murderous insurrectionary system.
Integrant
All these are integrant parts of the republic.
Intelligencer
All the intriguers in foreign politics, all the spies, and all the intelligencers . . . acted solely upon that principle.
Intemperately
The people . . . who behaved very unwisely and intemperately on that occasion.
Intolerance
These few restrictions, I hope, are no great stretches of intolerance, no very violent exertions of despotism.
Intricate
The nature of man is intricate.
Invalidation
So many invalidations of their right.
Iota
They never depart an iota from the authentic formulas of tyranny and usurpation.
Jacobinize
France was not then jacobinized.
Joinery
A piece of joinery . . . whimsically dovetailed.
Juridic
The body corporate of the kingdom, in juridical construction, never dies.
Jurist
It has ever been the method of public jurists to draw a great part of the analogies on which they form the law of nations from the principles of law which prevail in civil community.
King
Kings will be tyrants from policy, when subjects are rebels from principle.
Latent
The evils latent in the most promising contrivances are provided for as they arise.
Law
Law is beneficence acting by rule.
Lead
At the time I speak of, and having a momentary lead, . . . I am sure I did my country important service.
Levity
The levity that is fatigued and disgusted with everything of which it is in possession.
Liberalize
To open and to liberalize the mind.
Lieu
The plan of extortion had been adopted in lieu of the scheme of confiscation.
Link
No one generation could link with the other.
Lopping
The loppings made from that stock whilst it stood.
Mediatorial
My measures were . . . healing and mediatorial.
Medium
A medium of six years of war, and six years of peace.
merge
To merge all natural . . . sentiment in inordinate vanity.
Middle
In this, as in most questions of state, there is a middle.
Militate
These are great questions, where great names militate against each other.
Misnomer
Many of the changes, by a great misnomer, called parliamentary “reforms”.
Mitigate
This opinion . . . mitigated kings into companions.
Muddy
Cold hearts and muddy understandings.
Mump
And then when mumping with a sore leg, . . . canting and whining.
Nose
A sort of national convention, dubious in its nature . . . nosed Parliament in the very seat of its authority.
Nothing
The influence of reason in producing our passions is nothing near so extensive as is commonly believed.
Nurse
The nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise.
Occasion
When my occasions took me into France.
Officious
They were tolerably well bred, very officious, humane, and hospitable.
Order
Good order is the foundation of all good things.
Origin
This mixed system of opinion and sentiment had its origin in the ancient chivalry.
Originate
A decomposition of the whole civil and political mass, for the purpose of originating a new civil order.
pact
The engagement and pact of society which goes by the name of the constitution.
Pander
Those wicked panders to avarice and ambition.
Panegyrist
If these panegyrists are in earnest.
Peculate
An oppressive, . . . rapacious, and peculating despotism.
Peculation
Every British subject . . . active in the discovery of peculations has been ruined.
Perennial
The perennial existence of bodies corporate.
Permutation
The violent convulsions and permutations that have been made in property.
Pervade
A spirit of cabal, intrigue, and proselytism pervaded all their thoughts, words, and actions.
Privilege
A people inheriting privileges, franchises, and liberties.
Product
These institutions are the products of enthusiasm.
Prog
I have been endeavoring to prog for you.
Proof
This was a good, stout proof article of faith.
Proportionable
But eloquence may exist without a proportionable degree of wisdom.
Proselytism
They were possessed of a spirit of proselytism in the most fanatical degree.
Proselytize
One of those whom they endeavor to proselytize.
Prototype
They will turn their backs on it, like their great precursor and prototype.
Provide
Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants.
Proxy
I have no man's proxy: I speak only for myself.
Prurience
The pruriency of curious ears.
Pulse
When the ear receives any simple sound, it is struck by a single pulse of the air, which makes the eardrum and the other membranous parts vibrate according to the nature and species of the stroke.
Purchase
A politician, to do great things, looks for a power -- what our workmen call a purchase.
Quadrate
The objections of these speculatists of its forms do not quadrate with their theories.
Qualification
There is no qualification for government but virtue and wisdom, actual or presumptive.
Radical
The most determined exertions of that authority, against them, only showed their radical independence.
Rancor
It would not be easy to conceive the passion, rancor, and malice of their tongues and hearts.
Range
It would be absurd in me to range myself on the side of the Duke of Bedford and the corresponding society.
Rankle
This would have left a rankling wound in the hearts of the people.
Rare
A perfect union of wit and judgment is one of the rarest things in the world.
Reasonable
Men have no right to what is not reasonable.
Recruit
The state is to have recruits to its strength, and remedies to its distempers.
Rectify
This was an error of opinion which a conflicting opinion would have rectified.
Rehabilitate
Restoring and rehabilitating the party.
Remain
When this remain of horror has entirely subsided.
Reptile
There is also a false, reptile prudence, the result not of caution, but of fear.
Retrieve
There is much to be done . . . and much to be retrieved.
Reverse
To make everything the reverse of what they have seen, is quite as easy as to destroy.
Revolt
This abominable medley is made rather to revolt young and ingenuous minds.
Riant
In such cases the sublimity must be drawn from the other sources, with a strict caution, howewer, against anything light and riant.
Rig
That uncertain season before the rigs of Michaelmas were yet well composed.
Right
Men have no right to what is not reasonable.
Ring
The assertion is still ringing in our ears.
Ripe
I am not ripe to pass sentence on the gravest public bodies.
Rochet
They see no difference between an idler with a hat and national cockade, and an idler in a cowl or in a rochet.
Roundabout
We have taken a terrible roundabout road.
Rumple
They would not give a dog's ear of their most rumpled and ragged Scotch paper for twenty of your fairest assignats.
Run
They who made their arrangements in the first run of misadventure . . . put a seal on their calamities.
Saber
You send troops to saber and bayonet us into submission.
Salient
He had in himself a salient, living spring of generous and manly action.
Sanguinely
I can not speculate quite so sanguinely as he does.
Sardonic
The scornful, ferocious, sardonic grin of a bloody ruffian.
Scope
Excuse me if I have given too much scope to the reflections which have arisen in my mind.
Sensibility
The true lawgiver ought to have a heart full of sensibility.
This adds greatly to my sensibility.
Signalize
It is this passion which drives men to all the ways we see in use of signalizing themselves.
Smash
Here everything is broken and smashed to pieces.
Smithery
The din of all his smithery may some time or other possibly wake this noble duke.
Snap
But this weapon will snap short, unfaithful to the hand that employs it.
Something
We have something fairer play than a reasoner could have expected formerly.
Spatter
Upon any occasion he is to be spattered over with the blood of his people.
Stagger
Grants to the house of Russell were so enormous, as not only to outrage economy, but even to stagger credibility.
Stand
The Punic wars could not have stood the human race in less than three millions of the species.
Standard
A disposition to preserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman.
Stretch
They take up, one day, the most violent and stretched prerogative.
Studied
I shrewdly suspect that he is little studied of a theory of moral proportions.
Stunt
When, by a cold penury, I blast the abilities of a nation, and stunt the growth of its active energies, the ill or may do is beyond all calculation.
Style
One style to a gracious benefactor, another to a proud, insulting foe.
Subservient
Their temporal ambition was wholly subservient to their proselytizing spirit.
Substance
It is insolent in words, in manner; but in substance it is not only insulting, but alarming.
Subterfuge
By a miserable subterfuge, they hope to render this position safe by rendering it nugatory.
Subtilize
Nor as yet have we subtilized ourselves into savages.
Superficial
He is a presumptuous and superficial writer.
Supervene
A tyrany immediately supervened.
Surfeit
Matter and argument have been supplied abundantly, and even to surfeit.
Surrender
That he may secure some liberty he makes a surrender in trust of the whole of it.
Swing
To prevent anything which may prove an obstacle to the full swing of his genius.
Taunting
Every kind of insolent and taunting reflection.
Tolerate
We tolerate them because property and liberty, to a degree, require that toleration.
Tontine
Too many of the financiers by professions are apt to see nothing in revenue but banks, and circulations, and annuities on lives, and tontines, and perpetual rents, and all the small wares of the shop.
Transfer
I shall here only consider it as a transfer of property.
Transit
In France you are now . . . in the transit from one form of government to another.
Truck
Despotism itself is obliged to truck and huckster.
Turnspit
His lordship is his majesty's turnspit.
Uncivil
Men can not enjoy the rights of an uncivil and of a civil state together.
Usurp
Another revolution, to get rid of this illegitimate and usurped government, would of course be perfectly justifiable.
Valetudinary
It renders the habit of society dangerously valetudinary.
Vapid
A cheap, bloodless reformation, a guiltless liberty, appear flat and vapid to their taste.
Veer
an ordinary community which is hostile or friendly as passion or as interest may veer about.
Venal
The venal cry and prepared vote of a passive senate.
Vermin
They disdain such vermin when the mighty boar of the forest . . . is before them.
Very
I looked on the consideration of public service or public ornament to be real and very justice.
Vestige
What vestiges of liberty or property have they left?
Vicious
The title of these lords was vicious in its origin.
Vista
In the groves of their academy, at the end of every vista, you see nothing but the gallows.
Vitiate
Without care it may be used to vitiate our minds.
Vogue
Whatsoever its vogue may be, I still flatter myself that the parents of the growing generation will be satisfied with what to be taught to their children in Westminster, in Eton, or in Winchester.
Zigzag
The fanatics going straight forward and openly, the politicians by the surer mode of zigzag.