I know it sounds plausible, and is readily adopted by those who have little sympathy with the sufferings of others, to wish to jumble the innocent and guilty into one mass by a general indemnity.
Burke warns against the dangers of general indemnity, which can blur the lines between the innocent and the guilty.
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More from Edmund Burke
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.
Though a king may abdicate for his own person, he cannot abdicate for the monarchy.
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.
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.
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