The whole service is irregular: nobody is free from small offences; and, as I have said, the great offender can always crush the small one.
Edmund Burke: “The whole service is irregular: nobody is free from small offences; and, as I have said, the great offender can always…”
Editor's note · Context
Burke asserts that the entire service is flawed, with everyone guilty of minor offenses, making it easy for the powerful to dominate.
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When such an unwarrantable maxim is once established, that no throne is lawful but the elective, no one act of the princes who preceded this era of fictitious election can be valid.
By adhering in this manner and on those principles to our forefathers, we are guided, not by the superstition of antiquarians, but by the spirit of philosophic analogy.
This is the spirit of our Constitution, not only in its settled course, but in all its revolutions.
Unquestionably there was at the Revolution, in the person of King William, a small and a temporary deviation from the strict order of a regular hereditary succession; but it is against all genuine principles of jurisprudence to draw a…





