The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 04 (of 12)Burke, Edmund
Philosophy
The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 04 (of 12)
Burke, Edmund
Great Britain -- Politics and government -- 1760-1820; Political science -- Early works to 1800
But the leaders of party will not go the length of the doctrines taught
by the seditious clubs. I am sure they do not mean to do so. God forbid!
Perhaps even those who are directly carrying on the work of this
pernicious foreign faction do not all of them intend to produce all the
mischiefs which must inevitably follow from their having any success in
their proceedings. As to leaders in parties, nothing is more common than
to see them blindly led. The world is governed by go-betweens. These
go-betweens influence the persons with whom they carry on the
intercourse, by stating their own sense to each of them as the sense of
the other; and thus they reciprocally master both sides. It is first
buzzed about the ears of leaders, "that their friends without doors are
very eager for some measure, or very warm about some opinion,--that you
must not be too rigid with them. They are useful persons, and zealous in
the cause. They may be a little wrong, but the spirit of liberty must
not be damped; and by the influence you obtain from some degree of
concurrence with them at present, you may be enabled to set them right
hereafter."
Thus the leaders are at first drawn to a connivance with sentiments and
proceedings often totally different from their serious and deliberate
notions. But their acquiescence answers every purpose.
With no better than such powers, the go-betweens assume a new
representative character. What at best was but an acquiescence is
magnified into an authority, and thence into a desire on the part of the
leaders; and it is carried down as such to the subordinate members of
parties. By this artifice they in their turn are led into measures which
at first, perhaps, few of them wished at all, or at least did not desire
vehemently or systematically.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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