I am now endeavoring to ascertain whether there exists, in fact, any such necessity as we hear every day asserted, to furnish a miserable pretext for counselling us to surrender at discretion our conquests, our honor, our dignity, our very independence, and, with it, all that is dear to man.
Burke questions the necessity of surrendering national achievements and independence in light of ongoing conflict.
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More from Edmund Burke
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.
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.
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