All in complete armor, and in the guise of defiance, they presented a petition, very humble in the language, but excessive in the substance, in which they declared their liberties, and prayed that they might be formally allowed and established by the royal authority.
Burke describes a significant moment where English barons confront the king to assert their liberties.
Share
More from Edmund Burke
The improvements of the National Assembly are superficial, their errors fundamental.
But when the Assembly were led, through a contempt of moral, to a defiance of economical principles, it might at least have been expected that nothing would be omitted on their part to lessen this difficulty, to prevent any aggravation of…
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.
Rome, under her emperors, united the evils of both systems; and this unnatural combination was one great cause of her ruin.
Other voices in this conversation
