The adherence to the title of Robert was a cause, or a pretence, of depriving many of their vast possessions, which were split or parcelled out amongst the king's creatures, with great injustice to particulars, but in the consequences with general and lasting benefit.
Burke addresses the injustices faced by individuals due to royal favoritism, while also acknowledging the broader benefits that arose from such actions.
Share
More from Edmund Burke
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.
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.
It was not made to entice the smell of a mole, nuzzling and burying himself in his mother earth, as yours is.
Other voices in this conversation
