If, by effectual punishment of the guilty, they do not wholly disavow that practice, and the threat of it too, as any part of their policy, if ever a foreign prince enters into France, he must enter it as into a country of assassins.
Burke argues that a foreign prince would view France as a nation of assassins if they do not renounce their violent practices.
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More from Edmund Burke
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.
If kings who did not owe their crown to the choice of their people had no title to make laws, what will become of the statute De tallagio non concedendo? of the Petition of Right? of the act of Habeas Corpus?
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.
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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