The speculative line of demarcation, where obedience ought to end and resistance must begin, is faint, obscure, and not easily definable.
Editor's note · Context
Discussing the limits of governmental authority, Burke observes the inherent difficulty in precisely defining when citizens are justified in resisting their rulers.
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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.
Governments must be abused and deranged indeed, before it can be thought of; and the prospect of the future must be as bad as the experience of the past.
No experience has taught us that in any other course or method than that of an hereditary crown our liberties can be regularly perpetuated and preserved sacred as our hereditary right.
The people of England will not ape the fashions they have never tried, nor go back to those which they have found mischievous on trial.





