These laws we only have imperfectly in this book; but we are told in it, and I believe the fact, that he forbade, under pain of death, any prince or other person to presume to cause himself to be proclaimed Great Khân or Emperor, without being first duly elected by the princes lawfully assembled in general diet.
Burke explains that laws were strictly enforced, requiring proper election processes for rulers.
Share
More from Edmund Burke
A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.
Ill would our ancestors at the Revolution have deserved their fame for wisdom, if they had found no security for their freedom, but in rendering their government feeble in its operations and precarious in its tenure,--if they had been able…
But the course of succession is the healthy habit of the British Constitution.
We procure reverence to our civil institutions on the principle upon which Nature teaches us to revere individual men: on account of their age, and on account of those from whom they are descended.
Other voices in this conversation
