We felt for them as men; but we kept aloof from them, because we were not citizens of France.
Edmund Burke: “We felt for them as men; but we kept aloof from them, because we were not citizens of France.”
Editor's note · Context
From his critique of the French Revolution, explaining England's initial stance of sympathy but non-intervention in French affairs.
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The engagement and pact of society, which generally goes by the name of the Constitution, forbids such invasion and such surrender.
We procure reverence to our civil institutions on the principle upon which Nature teaches us to revere individual men: on account of their age, and on account of those from whom they are descended.
Ill would our ancestors at the Revolution have deserved their fame for wisdom, if they had found no security for their freedom, but in rendering their government feeble in its operations and precarious in its tenure,--if they had been able…
As he is not to obey us, but we are to obey the law in him, our Constitution has made no sort of provision towards rendering him, as a servant, in any degree responsible.





