Paul Benfield is the grand Parliamentary reformer, the reformer to whom the whole choir of reformers bow, and to whom even the right honorable gentleman himself must yield the palm: for what region in the empire, what city, what borough, what county, what tribunal in this kingdom is not full of his labors?
Burke describes Paul Benfield as a significant figure in the movement for Parliamentary reform.
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Do they mean to attaint and disable backwards all the kings that have reigned before the Revolution, and consequently to stain the throne of England with the blot of a continual usurpation?
This idea of a liberal descent inspires us with a sense of habitual native dignity, which prevents that upstart insolence almost inevitably adhering to and disgracing those who are the first acquirers of any distinction.
They threw a politic, well-wrought veil over every circumstance tending to weaken the rights which in the meliorated order of succession they meant to perpetuate, or which might furnish a precedent for any future departure from what they…
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