The task is of another nature to those who mean to promise nothing that it is not in their intention, or may possibly be in their power to perform,--to those who are bound and principled no more to delude the understandings than to violate the liberty of their fellow-subjects.
Burke emphasizes the importance of honest intentions in making promises to avoid misleading others.
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The people of England will not ape the fashions they have never tried, nor go back to those which they have found mischievous on trial.
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…
No experience has taught us that in any other course or method than that of an hereditary crown our liberties can be regularly perpetuated and preserved sacred as our hereditary right.
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.
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