We must assume the rights of what represents the public to control the individual, to make his will and his acts to submit to their will, until some intolerable grievance shall make us know that it does not answer its end, and will submit neither to reformation nor restraint.
Burke argues that society must empower representatives to control individuals until a significant grievance arises.
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More from Edmund Burke
The ceremony of cashiering kings, of which these gentlemen talk so much at their ease, can rarely, if ever, be performed without force.
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.
The engagement and pact of society, which generally goes by the name of the Constitution, forbids such invasion and such surrender.
This is the spirit of our Constitution, not only in its settled course, but in all its revolutions.
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