In this situation it was resolved to make a new and entirely mercenary revolution, and to set up to sale the government, secured to its present possessor by every tie of public faith and every sacred obligation which could bind or influence mankind.
Edmund Burke: “In this situation it was resolved to make a new and entirely mercenary revolution, and to set up to sale the government…”
Editor's note · Context
Burke discusses the decision to create a mercenary revolution that undermines public trust.
Share
More from Edmund Burke
Who could conceive that men who are habitually meddling, daring, subtle, active, of litigious dispositions and unquiet minds, would easily fall back into their old condition of obscure contention, and laborious, low, and unprofitable…
The engagement and pact of society, which generally goes by the name of the Constitution, forbids such invasion and such surrender.
The House of Lords, for instance, is not morally competent to dissolve the House of Commons,--no, nor even to dissolve itself, nor to abdicate, if it would, its portion in the legislature of the kingdom.
Unquestionably there was at the Revolution, in the person of King William, a small and a temporary deviation from the strict order of a regular hereditary succession; but it is against all genuine principles of jurisprudence to draw a…





