Their principles are wild and wicked; but let justice be done even to frenzy and villany.
Edmund Burke: “Their principles are wild and wicked; but let justice be done even to frenzy and villany.”
Editor's note · Context
Burke acknowledges the wildness of certain principles while calling for justice even for the wicked.
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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?
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.
No experience has taught us that in any other course or method than that of an hereditary crown our liberties can be regularly perpetuated and preserved sacred as our hereditary right.
A few years ago I should be ashamed to overload a matter so capable of supporting itself by the then unnecessary support of any argument; but this seditious, unconstitutional doctrine is now publicly taught, avowed, and printed.





