Upon the whole, then, follow him where you will, let him have Eastern or Western law, you find everywhere arbitrary power and peculation of governors proscribed and horribly punished,--more so than I should ever wish to punish any, the most guilty, human creature.
Burke argues that arbitrary power and corruption are universally condemned across different legal systems.
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More from Edmund Burke
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.
But supposing they had ranked as they ought to do, and as with us they do actually, the sides of sick-beds are not the academies for forming statesmen and legislators.
A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.
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.
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