I do not justify the punishment; but the severity of it shows how little of their power the princes of that country mean to delegate to their servants, the whole of which the gentleman at your bar says was delegated to him.
Burke critiques the severity of punishment as indicative of the limited power that rulers are willing to delegate to their subordinates.
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More from Edmund Burke
Whatever they are, I wish my countrymen rather to recommend to our neighbors the example of the British Constitution than to take models from them for the improvement of our own.
I think our happy situation owing to our Constitution,--but owing to the whole of it, and not to any part singly,--owing in a great measure to what we have left standing in our several reviews and reformations, as well as to what we have…
If any of them should happen to propose a scheme of liberty soberly limited, and defined with proper qualifications, he will be immediately outbid by his competitors, who will produce something more splendidly popular.
I would not exclude alteration neither; but even when I changed, it should be to preserve.
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