There a majority, sometimes real, sometimes pretended, captive itself, compels a captive king to issue as royal edicts, at third hand, the polluted nonsense of their most licentious and giddy coffee-houses.
Burke criticizes the French National Assembly for forcing a captive king to issue decrees that originate from the radical and ill-considered ideas of Parisian coffee-houses.
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Their objects would be enlarged with their elevation; but their disposition, and habits, and mode of accomplishing their designs must remain the same.
A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.
But the course of succession is the healthy habit of the British Constitution.
Who could conceive that men who are habitually meddling, daring, subtle, active, of litigious dispositions and unquiet minds, would easily fall back into their old condition of obscure contention, and laborious, low, and unprofitable…
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