Then, if he can neither touch life nor property, if he cannot lay a tax on his subjects, or declare peace or war, I leave it to your Lordships' judgment, whether he can be called, according to the principles of that constitution, an arbitrary power.
Burke concludes that if a ruler cannot control life, property, or declare war, they cannot be deemed an arbitrary power according to constitutional principles.
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More from Edmund Burke
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.
A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.
An irregular, convulsive movement may be necessary to throw off an irregular, convulsive disease.
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.
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