It cannot be dissembled that this is not at all remote from the case before us, where the great body of the people are excluded from all valuable property,--where the greatest and most ordinary benefits of society are conferred as privileges, and not enjoyed on the footing of common rights.
Burke critiques the exclusion of the majority from property and societal benefits, highlighting inequality.
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The engagement and pact of society, which generally goes by the name of the Constitution, forbids such invasion and such surrender.
Their objects would be enlarged with their elevation; but their disposition, and habits, and mode of accomplishing their designs must remain the same.
As he is not to obey us, but we are to obey the law in him, our Constitution has made no sort of provision towards rendering him, as a servant, in any degree responsible.
Who could conceive that men who are habitually meddling, daring, subtle, active, of litigious dispositions and unquiet minds, would easily fall back into their old condition of obscure contention, and laborious, low, and unprofitable…
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