But if, intemperately, unwisely, fatally, you sophisticate and poison the very source of government, by urging subtle deductions, and consequences odious to those you govern, from the unlimited and illimitable nature of supreme sovereignty, you will teach them by these means to call that sovereignty itself in question.
Burke warns against undermining the legitimacy of government through flawed reasoning about sovereignty.
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More from Edmund Burke
But the course of succession is the healthy habit of the British Constitution.
Their trust for the future preservation of the Constitution was not in future revolutions.
They look upon the legal hereditary succession of their crown as among their rights, not as among their wrongs,--as a benefit, not as a grievance,--as a security for their liberty, not as a badge of servitude.
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.
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