Besides, I must honestly tell you that I could not vote for, or countenance in any way, a statute which stigmatizes with the crime of piracy these men whom an act of Parliament had previously put out of the protection of the law.
Burke refuses to support a statute that labels certain individuals as pirates after they have been stripped of legal protection.
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More from Edmund Burke
The speculative line of demarcation, where obedience ought to end and resistance must begin, is faint, obscure, and not easily definable.
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.
This is the spirit of our Constitution, not only in its settled course, but in all its revolutions.
Though a king may abdicate for his own person, he cannot abdicate for the monarchy.
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