On the record
You have no reason to judge of them otherwise than by the specimen: for how can you judge of what is lost but from what remains?
Said by
Edmund Burke
Source
gutenberg.orgYou have no reason to judge of them otherwise than by the specimen: for how can you judge of what is lost but from what remains?
Burke discusses the limitations of judgment based on incomplete information.
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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.
Do they mean to attaint and disable backwards all the kings that have reigned before the Revolution, and consequently to stain the throne of England with the blot of a continual usurpation?
But the course of succession is the healthy habit of the British Constitution.
The speculative line of demarcation, where obedience ought to end and resistance must begin, is faint, obscure, and not easily definable.