I confess, that, if a man has done great services, it may be some alleviation of lighter faults; but then they ought to be urged as such,--with modesty, with humility, with confession of the faults, and not with a proud and insolent defiance.
Burke argues that acknowledgment of faults should accompany any claims of service, advocating for humility.
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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.
They look upon the legal hereditary succession of their crown as among their rights, not as among their wrongs,--as a benefit, not as a grievance,--as a security for their liberty, not as a badge of servitude.
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…
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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