A royal household, grown enormous, even in the meanest departments, may weaken and perhaps destroy all energy in the highest offices of the state.
Edmund Burke: “A royal household, grown enormous, even in the meanest departments, may weaken and perhaps destroy all energy in the…”
Editor's note · Context
Burke warns that an excessively large royal household can undermine the effectiveness of government.
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By adhering in this manner and on those principles to our forefathers, we are guided, not by the superstition of antiquarians, but by the spirit of philosophic analogy.
This idea of a liberal descent inspires us with a sense of habitual native dignity, which prevents that upstart insolence almost inevitably adhering to and disgracing those who are the first acquirers of any distinction.
A few years ago I should be ashamed to overload a matter so capable of supporting itself by the then unnecessary support of any argument; but this seditious, unconstitutional doctrine is now publicly taught, avowed, and printed.
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…





