When, therefore, amongst such a people any resolution of consequence was to be taken, there was no way of effecting it but by bringing together the whole body of the nation, that every individual might consent to the law, and each reciprocally bind the other to the observation of it.
He explains that in such a society, collective consent is necessary for any significant decision-making process.
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More from Edmund Burke
To keep a balance between the power of acquisition on the part of the subject and the demands he is to answer on the part of the state is the fundamental part of the skill of a true politician.
I would not exclude alteration neither; but even when I changed, it should be to preserve.
Never did a state, in any case, enrich itself by the confiscations of the citizens.
They rob only to enable them to cheat; but in a very short time they defeat the ends both of the robbery and the fraud, by making out accounts for other purposes, which blow up their whole apparatus of force and of deception.
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