Conquest cannot give a right to arbitrary power, ix. 456.
Edmund Burke: “Conquest cannot give a right to arbitrary power, ix. 456.”
Editor's note · Context
Burke asserts that conquest does not justify the exercise of arbitrary power.
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They look upon the legal hereditary succession of their crown as among their rights, not as among their wrongs,--as a benefit, not as a grievance,--as a security for their liberty, not as a badge of servitude.
If all the absurd theories of lawyers and divines were to vitiate the objects in which they are conversant, we should have no law and no religion left in the world.
But the king of Great Britain obeys no other person; all other persons are individually, and collectively too, under him, and owe to him a legal obedience.
But an absurd theory on one side of a question forms no justification for alleging a false fact or promulgating mischievous maxims on the other.





