The claim of a privilege seems rather, ex vi termini, to imply a superior power: for to talk of the privileges of a state or of a person who has no superior is hardly any better than speaking nonsense.
Burke emphasizes the inherent contradiction in discussing privileges without acknowledging a superior authority.
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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.
They threw a politic, well-wrought veil over every circumstance tending to weaken the rights which in the meliorated order of succession they meant to perpetuate, or which might furnish a precedent for any future departure from what they…
They have little regard to the obvious consequences of their doctrine, though they may see that it leaves positive authority in very few of the positive institutions of this country.
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