Such a monarch may destroy one republic because it had a king at its head, and he may balance this extraordinary act by founding another republic that has cut off the head of its king.
Edmund Burke: “Such a monarch may destroy one republic because it had a king at its head, and he may balance this extraordinary act by…”
Editor's note · Context
Burke reflects on the unpredictable nature of monarchs and their impact on republics.
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Their trust for the future preservation of the Constitution was not in future revolutions.
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.
So far is it from being true that we acquired a right by the Revolution to elect our kings, that, if we had possessed it before, the English nation did at that time most solemnly renounce and abdicate it, for themselves, and for all their…
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?





