They may, indeed, impeach the frame of that constitution, but can never touch this immovable principle.
Edmund Burke: “They may, indeed, impeach the frame of that constitution, but can never touch this immovable principle.”
Editor's note · Context
Burke emphasizes the enduring nature of fundamental principles in governance, regardless of constitutional changes.
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The House of Lords, for instance, is not morally competent to dissolve the House of Commons,--no, nor even to dissolve itself, nor to abdicate, if it would, its portion in the legislature of the kingdom.
Always acting as if in the presence of canonized forefathers, the spirit of freedom, leading in itself to misrule and excess, is tempered with an awful gravity.
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…
They look on the frame of their commonwealth, such as it stands, to be of inestimable value; and they conceive the undisturbed succession of the crown to be a pledge of the stability and perpetuity of all the other members of our…





