My Lords, you see that his colleagues so understood it; you see that we so understood it; and still you have heard the prisoner, after charging us with falsehood, insultingly tell us we may go on as we please, we may go on in our own way.
Burke addresses the court, highlighting the misunderstanding and accusations against him and his colleagues.
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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.
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.
Who could conceive that men who are habitually meddling, daring, subtle, active, of litigious dispositions and unquiet minds, would easily fall back into their old condition of obscure contention, and laborious, low, and unprofitable…
By adhering in this manner and on those principles to our forefathers, we are guided, not by the superstition of antiquarians, but by the spirit of philosophic analogy.
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