Hastings has avowed a certain set of principles upon which he acts; and your Lordships are therefore to judge whether his acts are justifiable because he found an evil system to act upon, or whether he and all governors upon earth have not a general good system upon which they ought to act.
Burke challenges the justification of actions taken under a flawed system, urging a moral standard for governance.
Share
More from Edmund Burke
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.
Their trust for the future preservation of the Constitution was not in future revolutions.
The ceremony of cashiering kings, of which these gentlemen talk so much at their ease, can rarely, if ever, be performed without force.
The House of Lords, for instance, is not morally competent to dissolve the House of Commons,--no, nor even to dissolve itself, nor to abdicate, if it would, its portion in the legislature of the kingdom.
Other voices in this conversation
