Whilst he keeps up this hopeful lawsuit in view of the damages he may recover against individuals, he loses the hearts of a whole people, and the vast subsidies which his ancestors had been used to receive from them.
Burke illustrates how a ruler's legal pursuits can lead to losing public support.
Share
More from Edmund Burke
To keep a balance between the power of acquisition on the part of the subject and the demands he is to answer on the part of the state is the fundamental part of the skill of a true politician.
The prattling about the rights of men will not be accepted in payment of a biscuit or a pound of gunpowder.
They rob only to enable them to cheat; but in a very short time they defeat the ends both of the robbery and the fraud, by making out accounts for other purposes, which blow up their whole apparatus of force and of deception.
Rome, under her emperors, united the evils of both systems; and this unnatural combination was one great cause of her ruin.
Other voices in this conversation
