I would reason this matter with the House on the mere policy of the question; and I would undertake to prove that an early dereliction of abuse is the direct interest of government,--of government taken abstractedly from its duties, and considered merely as a system intending its own conservation.
Burke argues that addressing abuses in government is in the best interest of its preservation.
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More from Edmund Burke
The engagement and pact of society, which generally goes by the name of the Constitution, forbids such invasion and such surrender.
No experience has taught us that in any other course or method than that of an hereditary crown our liberties can be regularly perpetuated and preserved sacred as our hereditary right.
We procure reverence to our civil institutions on the principle upon which Nature teaches us to revere individual men: on account of their age, and on account of those from whom they are descended.
They threw a politic, well-wrought veil over every circumstance tending to weaken the rights which in the meliorated order of succession they meant to perpetuate, or which might furnish a precedent for any future departure from what they…
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