What a pity it is, that he, who loved France so well as to chastise it, was not now alive, by an unsparing use of the rod (which, indeed, he would have spared little) to give them another instance of his paternal affection!
Burke expresses a wish that Frederick the Great were alive to discipline France for its actions.
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More from Edmund Burke
The ceremony of cashiering kings, of which these gentlemen talk so much at their ease, can rarely, if ever, be performed without force.
If kings who did not owe their crown to the choice of their people had no title to make laws, what will become of the statute De tallagio non concedendo? of the Petition of Right? of the act of Habeas Corpus?
Those who are servants in name, as well as in effect, do not like to be told of their situation, their duty, and their obligations.
We procure reverence to our civil institutions on the principle upon which Nature teaches us to revere individual men: on account of their age, and on account of those from whom they are descended.
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