Prevention.

Name: Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke - Prevention.
Author: Edmund Burke

Every good political institution must have a preventive operation as well as a remedial. It ought to have a natural tendency to exclude bad men from government, and not to trust for the safety of the state to subsequent punishment alone: punishment, which has ever been tardy and uncertain, and which, when power is suffered in bad hands, may chance to fall rather on the injured than the criminal.

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Chicago: Edmund Burke, "Prevention.," Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke in Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke Original Sources, accessed July 18, 2025, http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=47W2T6Y1M3AX7HW.

MLA: Burke, Edmund. "Prevention." Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke, in Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke, Original Sources. 18 Jul. 2025. http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=47W2T6Y1M3AX7HW.

Harvard: Burke, E, 'Prevention.' in Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. cited in , Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. Original Sources, retrieved 18 July 2025, from http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=47W2T6Y1M3AX7HW.