Political Quotes

Edmund Burke: He first asserts, that he was possessed of an arbitrary and despotic power, restrained by no laws but his own will.

On the record
He first asserts, that he was possessed of an arbitrary and despotic power, restrained by no laws but his own will.
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Edmund Burke

Editor's note · Context

Burke critiques Hastings for claiming absolute power without legal constraints.

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Jan 1, 1790

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…

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Jan 1, 1790

So far is it from being true that we acquired a right by the Revolution to elect our kings, that, if we had possessed it before, the English nation did at that time most solemnly renounce and abdicate it, for themselves, and for all their…

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Jan 1, 1790

The ceremony of cashiering kings, of which these gentlemen talk so much at their ease, can rarely, if ever, be performed without force.

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Jan 1, 1790

The House of Lords, for instance, is not morally competent to dissolve the House of Commons,--no, nor even to dissolve itself, nor to abdicate, if it would, its portion in the legislature of the kingdom.

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