This behavior does not indicate the spirit of injured innocence, but the audacity of hardened, habitual, shameless guilt,--affording legitimate grounds for inferring a very defective education, very evil society, or very vicious habits of life.
Burke describes a behavior indicative of guilt and poor upbringing, emphasizing societal influences.
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Governments must be abused and deranged indeed, before it can be thought of; and the prospect of the future must be as bad as the experience of the past.
The speculative line of demarcation, where obedience ought to end and resistance must begin, is faint, obscure, and not easily definable.
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?
So far is it from being true that we acquired a right by the Revolution to elect our kings, that, if we had possessed it before, the English nation did at that time most solemnly renounce and abdicate it, for themselves, and for all their…
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