The people are the natural control on authority; but to exercise and to control together is contradictory and impossible.
Edmund Burke: “The people are the natural control on authority; but to exercise and to control together is contradictory and…”
Editor's note · Context
Burke claims that the people serve as a natural check on authority, but cannot do both exercise and control power simultaneously.
Share
More from Edmund Burke
Not being illuminated with the light of which the gentlemen of France tell us they have got so abundant a share, they acted under a strong impression of the ignorance and fallibility of mankind.
Whatever they are, I wish my countrymen rather to recommend to our neighbors the example of the British Constitution than to take models from them for the improvement of our own.
I would not exclude alteration neither; but even when I changed, it should be to preserve.
I think our happy situation owing to our Constitution,--but owing to the whole of it, and not to any part singly,--owing in a great measure to what we have left standing in our several reviews and reformations, as well as to what we have…





