At the same time, God forbid, if by power be meant the ability to discover, to reach, to check, and to punish subordinate corruption, that he should not be enabled so to do, and to get at, to prosecute, and punish delinquency by law!
Edmund Burke: “At the same time, God forbid, if by power be meant the ability to discover, to reach, to check, and to punish…”
Editor's note · Context
Burke advocates for the necessity of honesty over arbitrary power in addressing corruption and ensuring justice.
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Always acting as if in the presence of canonized forefathers, the spirit of freedom, leading in itself to misrule and excess, is tempered with an awful gravity.
The ceremony of cashiering kings, of which these gentlemen talk so much at their ease, can rarely, if ever, be performed without force.
This is the spirit of our Constitution, not only in its settled course, but in all its revolutions.
They look upon the legal hereditary succession of their crown as among their rights, not as among their wrongs,--as a benefit, not as a grievance,--as a security for their liberty, not as a badge of servitude.





