The great prop of this whole system is not pretended to be its justice or its utility, but the supposed danger to the state, which gave rise to it originally, and which, they apprehend, would return, if this system were overturned.
Burke critiques a system that prioritizes perceived state dangers over justice and utility.
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Though a king may abdicate for his own person, he cannot abdicate for the monarchy.
The people of England will not ape the fashions they have never tried, nor go back to those which they have found mischievous on trial.
Who could doubt but that, at any expense to the state, of which they understood nothing, they must pursue their private interests, which they understood but too well?
The House of Lords, for instance, is not morally competent to dissolve the House of Commons,--no, nor even to dissolve itself, nor to abdicate, if it would, its portion in the legislature of the kingdom.
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