You are therefore at this moment in the awkward situation of fighting for a phantom,--a quiddity,--a thing that wants, not only a substance, but even a name,--for a thing which is neither abstract right nor profitable enjoyment.
Burke describes the absurdity of fighting for an intangible concept that lacks substance or clarity.
Share
More from Edmund Burke
No experience has taught us that in any other course or method than that of an hereditary crown our liberties can be regularly perpetuated and preserved sacred as our hereditary right.
Their objects would be enlarged with their elevation; but their disposition, and habits, and mode of accomplishing their designs must remain the same.
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?
Who could conceive that men who are habitually meddling, daring, subtle, active, of litigious dispositions and unquiet minds, would easily fall back into their old condition of obscure contention, and laborious, low, and unprofitable…
Other voices in this conversation
