If the money was taken without right, no claim of his could justify its being appropriated to himself: nor could the Company so appropriate it; for no man has a right to be generous out of another's goods.
Burke argues against the justification of appropriating funds taken without right, stressing the principle of rightful ownership.
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This is the spirit of our Constitution, not only in its settled course, but in all its revolutions.
If all the absurd theories of lawyers and divines were to vitiate the objects in which they are conversant, we should have no law and no religion left in the world.
Ill would our ancestors at the Revolution have deserved their fame for wisdom, if they had found no security for their freedom, but in rendering their government feeble in its operations and precarious in its tenure,--if they had been able…
But an absurd theory on one side of a question forms no justification for alleging a false fact or promulgating mischievous maxims on the other.
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