The change was made insensibly; but it is now strong and adult, and as public and declared as it is fixed beyond all power of reformation: so that there is none who hears me that is not as certain as I am, that the Company, in the sense in which it was formerly understood, has no existence.
Burke notes the irreversible changes in the constitution of a governing body, indicating a loss of its original purpose.
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Who could conceive that men who are habitually meddling, daring, subtle, active, of litigious dispositions and unquiet minds, would easily fall back into their old condition of obscure contention, and laborious, low, and unprofitable…
But an absurd theory on one side of a question forms no justification for alleging a false fact or promulgating mischievous maxims on the other.
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.
Governments must be abused and deranged indeed, before it can be thought of; and the prospect of the future must be as bad as the experience of the past.
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