But the Roman people, however degenerate, still retained much of their martial spirit; and as the Emperors held their power almost entirely by the affection of the soldiery, they found themselves often obliged to such enterprises as might prove them no improper heads of a military constitution.
Burke notes the Roman people's martial spirit and the necessity for emperors to engage in military endeavors to maintain their power.
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More from Edmund Burke
Always acting as if in the presence of canonized forefathers, the spirit of freedom, leading in itself to misrule and excess, is tempered with an awful gravity.
But supposing they had ranked as they ought to do, and as with us they do actually, the sides of sick-beds are not the academies for forming statesmen and legislators.
The ceremony of cashiering kings, of which these gentlemen talk so much at their ease, can rarely, if ever, be performed without force.
This is the spirit of our Constitution, not only in its settled course, but in all its revolutions.
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