On the record
None of us who would not risk his life rather than fall under a government purely arbitrary.
Said by
Edmund Burke
Source
gutenberg.orgNone of us who would not risk his life rather than fall under a government purely arbitrary.
Burke expresses the universal desire to avoid arbitrary governance at all costs.
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When such an unwarrantable maxim is once established, that no throne is lawful but the elective, no one act of the princes who preceded this era of fictitious election can be valid.
The ceremony of cashiering kings, of which these gentlemen talk so much at their ease, can rarely, if ever, be performed without force.
This is the spirit of our Constitution, not only in its settled course, but in all its revolutions.
The speculative line of demarcation, where obedience ought to end and resistance must begin, is faint, obscure, and not easily definable.