Despotism, if it means anything that is at all defensible, means a mode of government bound by no written rules, and coerced by no controlling magistracies or well-settled orders in the state.
Edmund Burke: “Despotism, if it means anything that is at all defensible, means a mode of government bound by no written rules, and…”
Editor's note · Context
Burke critiques despotism as a form of government lacking accountability and rules.
Share
More from Edmund Burke
We procure reverence to our civil institutions on the principle upon which Nature teaches us to revere individual men: on account of their age, and on account of those from whom they are descended.
They look on the frame of their commonwealth, such as it stands, to be of inestimable value; and they conceive the undisturbed succession of the crown to be a pledge of the stability and perpetuity of all the other members of our…
The ceremony of cashiering kings, of which these gentlemen talk so much at their ease, can rarely, if ever, be performed without force.
The engagement and pact of society, which generally goes by the name of the Constitution, forbids such invasion and such surrender.





