The emperor, protesting his weakness, commits them to their own defence, absolves them from, their allegiance, and confers on them a freedom which they have no longer the sense to value nor the virtue to defend.
Burke illustrates the irony of a ruler's weakness leading to the abandonment of his subjects.
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They will become flatterers instead of legislators,--the instruments, not the guides of the people.
I would not exclude alteration neither; but even when I changed, it should be to preserve.
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.
I think our happy situation owing to our Constitution,--but owing to the whole of it, and not to any part singly,--owing in a great measure to what we have left standing in our several reviews and reformations, as well as to what we have…
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