I am not ripe to pass sentence on the gravest public bodies, intrusted with magistracies of great authority and dignity, and charged with the safety of their fellow-citizens, upon the very same title that I am.
Burke expresses his reluctance to judge significant public bodies, emphasizing the weight of responsibility in such decisions.
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If kings who did not owe their crown to the choice of their people had no title to make laws, what will become of the statute De tallagio non concedendo? of the Petition of Right? of the act of Habeas Corpus?
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.
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.
But the king of Great Britain obeys no other person; all other persons are individually, and collectively too, under him, and owe to him a legal obedience.
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