That all these suggestions and assertions were false, and, if they had been true, would have furnished no just occasion for attacking either the Mahrattas or the French, with both of whom the British nation was then at peace.
Burke critiques the justification for attacking the Mahrattas and the French, emphasizing the importance of truth in political discourse.
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A few years ago I should be ashamed to overload a matter so capable of supporting itself by the then unnecessary support of any argument; but this seditious, unconstitutional doctrine is now publicly taught, avowed, and printed.
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.
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.
The ceremony of cashiering kings, of which these gentlemen talk so much at their ease, can rarely, if ever, be performed without force.
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