I would not go so far as to adopt the maxim, Quicquid multis peccatur inultum; but certainly offences committed by vast multitudes are somewhat palliated in the individuals, who, when so many escape, are always looked upon rather as unlucky than criminal.
Burke discusses the moral implications of collective wrongdoing and how it affects individual culpability.
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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.
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.
All your sophisters cannot produce anything better adapted to preserve a rational and manly freedom than the course that we have pursued, who have chosen our nature rather than our speculations, our breasts rather than our inventions, for…
No experience has taught us that in any other course or method than that of an hereditary crown our liberties can be regularly perpetuated and preserved sacred as our hereditary right.
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