It is a controversy (weak, indeed, and unequal, on the one part) between the proprietor and the robber, between the prisoner and the jailer, between the neck and the guillotine.
Edmund Burke: “It is a controversy (weak, indeed, and unequal, on the one part) between the proprietor and the robber, between the…”
Editor's note · Context
Burke critiques the power dynamics between oppressors and the oppressed, using vivid imagery to illustrate the struggle.
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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.
The engagement and pact of society, which generally goes by the name of the Constitution, forbids such invasion and such surrender.
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?





