We apprehend that mild measures may be powerfully enforced, and that acts of extreme rigor and injustice may be attended with as much feebleness in the execution as severity in the formation.
Edmund Burke: “We apprehend that mild measures may be powerfully enforced, and that acts of extreme rigor and injustice may be attended…”
Editor's note · Context
Burke suggests that mild measures can be effectively enforced, challenging the notion that severity guarantees strength.
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When such an unwarrantable maxim is once established, that no throne is lawful but the elective, no one act of the princes who preceded this era of fictitious election can be valid.
But the king of Great Britain obeys no other person; all other persons are individually, and collectively too, under him, and owe to him a legal obedience.
Though a king may abdicate for his own person, he cannot abdicate for the monarchy.
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.





