I have heard that a Tartar believes, when he has killed a man, that all his estimable qualities pass with his clothes and arms to the murderer; but I have never heard that it was the opinion of any savage Scythian, that, if he kills a brother villain, he is, ipso facto, absolved of all his own offences.
Burke references a belief among Tartars about the transfer of qualities through murder, using it to critique moral reasoning in violent acts.
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More from Edmund Burke
But the course of succession is the healthy habit of the British Constitution.
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 ceremony of cashiering kings, of which these gentlemen talk so much at their ease, can rarely, if ever, be performed without force.
This is the spirit of our Constitution, not only in its settled course, but in all its revolutions.
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