The amplitude of this latter description, reserving to them the judgment of any orders which have so much as that tendency, puts them in possession of a complete independence, an independence including a despotic authority over the subordinates and the country.
Burke warns that the broad authority given to the Directors could lead to despotic control over subordinates and the country.
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More from Edmund Burke
This idea of a liberal descent inspires us with a sense of habitual native dignity, which prevents that upstart insolence almost inevitably adhering to and disgracing those who are the first acquirers of any distinction.
They have little regard to the obvious consequences of their doctrine, though they may see that it leaves positive authority in very few of the positive institutions of this country.
They look on the frame of their commonwealth, such as it stands, to be of inestimable value; and they conceive the undisturbed succession of the crown to be a pledge of the stability and perpetuity of all the other members of our…
Always acting as if in the presence of canonized forefathers, the spirit of freedom, leading in itself to misrule and excess, is tempered with an awful gravity.
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