They have sometimes brought forth five or six hundred drunken women, calling at the bar of the Assembly for the blood of their own children, as being royalists or constitutionalists.
Edmund Burke: “They have sometimes brought forth five or six hundred drunken women, calling at the bar of the Assembly for the blood of…”
Editor's note · Context
Burke describes a disturbing scene where women demand the execution of their children, illustrating the chaos of revolutionary fervor.
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By adhering in this manner and on those principles to our forefathers, we are guided, not by the superstition of antiquarians, but by the spirit of philosophic analogy.
As he is not to obey us, but we are to obey the law in him, our Constitution has made no sort of provision towards rendering him, as a servant, in any degree responsible.
Who could doubt but that, at any expense to the state, of which they understood nothing, they must pursue their private interests, which they understood but too well?
This idea of a liberal descent inspires us with a sense of habitual native dignity, which prevents that upstart insolence almost inevitably adhering to and disgracing those who are the first acquirers of any distinction.





