They have much more to dread in that way from the confiscations, the rapines, the burnings, and the massacres that may follow in the train of a peace which shall establish the devastating and depopulating principles and example of the French Regicides in security and triumph and dominion.
Burke warns that peace could lead to greater dangers for society than the war itself, particularly from the aftermath of revolutionary actions.
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But the course of succession is the healthy habit of the British Constitution.
Who could flatter himself that these men, suddenly, and as it were by enchantment, snatched from the humblest rank of subordination, would not be intoxicated with their unprepared greatness?
But supposing they had ranked as they ought to do, and as with us they do actually, the sides of sick-beds are not the academies for forming statesmen and legislators.
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.
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