At the very outset, I do not hesitate to affirm, that this country in particular, and the public law in general, have suffered more by this negotiation of experiment than by all the battles together that we have lost from the commencement of this century to this time, when it touches so nearly to its close.
Burke claims that the negative effects of a particular negotiation have been more damaging than military losses.
Share
More from Edmund Burke
The people of England will not ape the fashions they have never tried, nor go back to those which they have found mischievous on trial.
But the course of succession is the healthy habit of the British Constitution.
They look on the frame of their commonwealth, such as it stands, to be of inestimable value; and they conceive the undisturbed succession of the crown to be a pledge of the stability and perpetuity of all the other members of our…
The ceremony of cashiering kings, of which these gentlemen talk so much at their ease, can rarely, if ever, be performed without force.
Other voices in this conversation
