We have not brought before you an obscure offender, who, when his insignificance and weakness are weighed against the power of the prosecution, gives even to public justice something of the appearance of oppression: no, my Lords, we have brought before you the first man of India, in rank, authority, and station.
Burke emphasizes that the individual on trial is a significant figure, contrasting him with lesser offenders to highlight the case's importance.
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The engagement and pact of society, which generally goes by the name of the Constitution, forbids such invasion and such surrender.
They threw a politic, well-wrought veil over every circumstance tending to weaken the rights which in the meliorated order of succession they meant to perpetuate, or which might furnish a precedent for any future departure from what they…
But an absurd theory on one side of a question forms no justification for alleging a false fact or promulgating mischievous maxims on the other.
When such an unwarrantable maxim is once established, that no throne is lawful but the elective, no one act of the princes who preceded this era of fictitious election can be valid.
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