He must be grossly ignorant of America, who thinks, that, without falling into this confusion of all rules of equity and policy, you can restrain any single colony, especially Virginia and Maryland, the central, and most important of them all.
Burke claims that anyone who believes they can control a colony without chaos is grossly ignorant of American realities.
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More from Edmund Burke
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.
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.
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.
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.
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