It has been his ambition and his policy to reconcile the vanquished to his fortune, to show that they had gained by the change, to convert their momentary suffering into a long benefit, and to draw from the humiliation of his enemies an accession to his own glory.
Burke discusses the ambition of conquerors to win the loyalty of the vanquished by presenting their defeat as beneficial.
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But an absurd theory on one side of a question forms no justification for alleging a false fact or promulgating mischievous maxims on the other.
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.
A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.
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.
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