From the total want of police, hardly a day elapses but I am informed of some tragical event, whereof the bare recital is shocking to humanity.
Edmund Burke: “From the total want of police, hardly a day elapses but I am informed of some tragical event, whereof the bare recital…”
Editor's note · Context
Burke highlights the dire state of law and order in a region, emphasizing the frequent violence that occurs due to a lack of police.
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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 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.
We procure reverence to our civil institutions on the principle upon which Nature teaches us to revere individual men: on account of their age, and on account of those from whom they are descended.
The speculative line of demarcation, where obedience ought to end and resistance must begin, is faint, obscure, and not easily definable.





