Those who give to others such rights perform acts that are void as they are given,--good indeed and valid only as tending to subject themselves, and those who act with them, to the Divine displeasure; because morally there can be no such power.
Burke warns that granting rights to others that are inherently void leads to moral consequences and divine displeasure.
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More from Edmund Burke
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?
A few years ago I should be ashamed to overload a matter so capable of supporting itself by the then unnecessary support of any argument; but this seditious, unconstitutional doctrine is now publicly taught, avowed, and printed.
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.
But an absurd theory on one side of a question forms no justification for alleging a false fact or promulgating mischievous maxims on the other.
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