The lawful prince must have, in everything but crime, the character of an usurper.
Edmund Burke: “The lawful prince must have, in everything but crime, the character of an usurper.”
Editor's note · Context
Burke asserts that a lawful prince must act with the characteristics of an usurper in all but criminal matters.
Share
More from Edmund Burke
We procure reverence to our civil institutions on the principle upon which Nature teaches us to revere individual men: on account of their age, and on account of those from whom they are descended.
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.
Ill would our ancestors at the Revolution have deserved their fame for wisdom, if they had found no security for their freedom, but in rendering their government feeble in its operations and precarious in its tenure,--if they had been able…
The engagement and pact of society, which generally goes by the name of the Constitution, forbids such invasion and such surrender.





