My Lords, if the Commons, in preparing articles of impeachment, should govern themselves by precedents of indictments, in my humble opinion they would depart from the ancient, nay, the constant, usage and practice of Parliament.
Burke warns that if the Commons follow indictment precedents for impeachment, they would stray from traditional parliamentary practices.
Share
More from Edmund Burke
If all the absurd theories of lawyers and divines were to vitiate the objects in which they are conversant, we should have no law and no religion left in the world.
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.
But supposing they had ranked as they ought to do, and as with us they do actually, the sides of sick-beds are not the academies for forming statesmen and legislators.
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.
Other voices in this conversation
