The Governor-General and Council, therefore, immediately gave constructions to their ill-defined authority which rendered it perfectly despotic,--constructions which if they were allowed, no action of theirs ought to be regarded as criminal.
Burke argues that the poorly defined authority of the Governor-General and Council led to despotic governance.
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More from Edmund Burke
The prattling about the rights of men will not be accepted in payment of a biscuit or a pound of gunpowder.
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.
Every honest mind, every true lover of liberty and humanity, must rejoice to find that injustice is not always good policy, nor rapine the high-road to riches.
They come from one who has been no tool of power, no flatterer of greatness, and who in his last acts does not wish to belie the tenor of his life.
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