To repeal by a denial of our right to tax in the preamble (and this, too, did not want advisers) would have cut, in the heroic style, the Gordian knot with a sword.
Edmund Burke: “To repeal by a denial of our right to tax in the preamble (and this, too, did not want advisers) would have cut, in the…”
Editor's note · Context
Burke argues that a bold repeal of the tax would have been a decisive and heroic action.
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Who could flatter himself that these men, suddenly, and as it were by enchantment, snatched from the humblest rank of subordination, would not be intoxicated with their unprepared greatness?
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.
Who could doubt but that, at any expense to the state, of which they understood nothing, they must pursue their private interests, which they understood but too well?
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.





