You have forbidden us to treat them with any of the old formalities of respect; and now you send troops to sabre and to bayonet us into a submission to fear and force which you did not suffer us to yield to the mild authority of opinion.
Burke contrasts the revolutionaries' use of military force to enforce their will with the traditional authority derived from public opinion and custom.
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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.
A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.
Do they mean to attaint and disable backwards all the kings that have reigned before the Revolution, and consequently to stain the throne of England with the blot of a continual usurpation?
An irregular, convulsive movement may be necessary to throw off an irregular, convulsive disease.
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