But its consequent rights being once supposed, many real charges and burdens grew from a fiction made only for the preservation of subordination; and in consequence of this, a great power was exercised over the persons and estates of the tenants.
Burke discusses the burdens that arose from the feudal system's legal fictions.
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More from Edmund Burke
Those who know what virtuous liberty is cannot bear to see it disgraced by incapable heads, on account of their having high-sounding words in their mouths.
The prattling about the rights of men will not be accepted in payment of a biscuit or a pound of gunpowder.
It was not made to entice the smell of a mole, nuzzling and burying himself in his mother earth, as yours is.
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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