As to menaces, nothing, in my opinion, can contribute more effectually to lower any sovereign in the public estimation, and to turn his defeats into disgraces, than to threaten in a moment of impotence.
Burke argues that threats made by a sovereign during moments of weakness can damage their reputation and authority.
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They come from one who has been no tool of power, no flatterer of greatness, and who in his last acts does not wish to belie the tenor of his life.
Who but the most desperate adventurers in philosophy and finance could at all have thought of destroying the settled revenue of the state, the sole security for the public credit, in the hope of rebuilding it with the materials of…
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.
This was reserved to our time, to quench the little glimmerings of reason which might break in upon the solid darkness of this enlightened age.
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