There are none of us, thank God, so uninstructed, who have learned our catechisms or the first elements of Christianity, who do not know that such conduct is not to be justified, and least of all by examples.
Burke emphasizes the moral understanding of right and wrong that even the least educated individuals possess.
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The House of Lords, for instance, is not morally competent to dissolve the House of Commons,--no, nor even to dissolve itself, nor to abdicate, if it would, its portion in the legislature of the kingdom.
Always acting as if in the presence of canonized forefathers, the spirit of freedom, leading in itself to misrule and excess, is tempered with an awful gravity.
The engagement and pact of society, which generally goes by the name of the Constitution, forbids such invasion and such surrender.
Though a king may abdicate for his own person, he cannot abdicate for the monarchy.
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