Our own authority is, indeed, as much a trust originally as the Company's authority is a trust derivatively; and it is the use we make of the resumed power that must justify or condemn us in the resumption of it.
Burke compares the authority of Parliament to that of the East India Company, emphasizing the trust involved in both.
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If any of them should happen to propose a scheme of liberty soberly limited, and defined with proper qualifications, he will be immediately outbid by his competitors, who will produce something more splendidly popular.
Let us imitate their caution, if we wish to deserve their fortune or to retain their bequests.
I would not exclude alteration neither; but even when I changed, it should be to preserve.
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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