What state could exist that allowed its inferior members to hold forts and garrisons independent of the superior administration?
Edmund Burke: “What state could exist that allowed its inferior members to hold forts and garrisons independent of the superior…”
Editor's note · Context
Burke critiques the absurdity of allowing subordinate entities to maintain military power independently of the central authority.
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The engagement and pact of society, which generally goes by the name of the Constitution, forbids such invasion and such surrender.
But supposing they had ranked as they ought to do, and as with us they do actually, the sides of sick-beds are not the academies for forming statesmen and legislators.
Do they mean to attaint and disable backwards all the kings that have reigned before the Revolution, and consequently to stain the throne of England with the blot of a continual usurpation?
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?





