But though we ought to protect against violence the bigotry of others, and to correct our own too, if we have any left, we ought to reflect, that an offence which in its cause is national ought not in its effects to be vindicated on individuals, but with a very well-tempered severity.
Burke emphasizes the need for a balanced approach to justice when addressing national offenses.
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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.
Who could flatter himself that these men, suddenly, and as it were by enchantment, snatched from the humblest rank of subordination, would not be intoxicated with their unprepared greatness?
They threw a politic, well-wrought veil over every circumstance tending to weaken the rights which in the meliorated order of succession they meant to perpetuate, or which might furnish a precedent for any future departure from what they…
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