There they have the impudence to state that they aim at no conquest: insinuating that all the old, lawful powers of the world had each made a constant, open profession of a design of subduing his neighbors.
Burke criticizes the audacity of a political declaration that claims to seek no conquest while implying otherwise.
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The people of England will not ape the fashions they have never tried, nor go back to those which they have found mischievous on trial.
Governments must be abused and deranged indeed, before it can be thought of; and the prospect of the future must be as bad as the experience of the past.
If kings who did not owe their crown to the choice of their people had no title to make laws, what will become of the statute De tallagio non concedendo? of the Petition of Right? of the act of Habeas Corpus?
Do they mean to attaint and disable backwards all the kings that have reigned before the Revolution, and consequently to stain the throne of England with the blot of a continual usurpation?
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