He ought to have known that this prince never claimed arbitrary power; that the principles he adopted were to govern by law, to repress the oppressions of his inferior governors, to recognize in the nobility the respect due to their rank, and in the people the protection to which they were by law entitled.
Burke asserts that the ruler in question governed by law and respected the rights of both nobility and common people.
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More from Edmund Burke
Whatever they are, I wish my countrymen rather to recommend to our neighbors the example of the British Constitution than to take models from them for the improvement of our own.
I would not exclude alteration neither; but even when I changed, it should be to preserve.
Let us imitate their caution, if we wish to deserve their fortune or to retain their bequests.
I think our happy situation owing to our Constitution,--but owing to the whole of it, and not to any part singly,--owing in a great measure to what we have left standing in our several reviews and reformations, as well as to what we have…
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