He must have seen the Rajah's motive for desiring delay, and he ought to have taken care that this poor man should not be oppressed and ruined by this compliance with requests founded on such motives.
Burke emphasizes the moral responsibility of leaders to protect vulnerable individuals from exploitation.
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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 engagement and pact of society, which generally goes by the name of the Constitution, forbids such invasion and such surrender.
Ill would our ancestors at the Revolution have deserved their fame for wisdom, if they had found no security for their freedom, but in rendering their government feeble in its operations and precarious in its tenure,--if they had been able…
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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