But an informer, in case of highway robbery, may obtain forty pounds to his own profit by his own evidence: this is not in consequence of positive provision in the act of Parliament; it is a provision of policy, lest the purpose of the act should be defeated.
Burke discusses the policy rationale behind allowing informers to profit from their testimony in specific cases to ensure justice is served.
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Who could doubt but that, at any expense to the state, of which they understood nothing, they must pursue their private interests, which they understood but too well?
All your sophisters cannot produce anything better adapted to preserve a rational and manly freedom than the course that we have pursued, who have chosen our nature rather than our speculations, our breasts rather than our inventions, for…
Do they mean to attaint and disable backwards all the kings that have reigned before the Revolution, and consequently to stain the throne of England with the blot of a continual usurpation?
The engagement and pact of society, which generally goes by the name of the Constitution, forbids such invasion and such surrender.
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