The provinces groaned at once under all the severity of public imposition and the rapaciousness of private usury.
Edmund Burke: “The provinces groaned at once under all the severity of public imposition and the rapaciousness of private usury.”
Editor's note · Context
Burke describes the dual burden of public and private financial pressures faced by the provinces in the Roman Empire.
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Their objects would be enlarged with their elevation; but their disposition, and habits, and mode of accomplishing their designs must remain the same.
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?
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.
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?





