Whilst the votes of the smaller proprietors continued, a door was left open for the public sense to enter into that society: since that door has been closed, the proprietary has become, even more than formerly, an aggregate of private interests, which subsist at the expense of the collective body.
Burke argues that the exclusion of smaller proprietors has led to a dominance of private interests over collective governance.
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The ceremony of cashiering kings, of which these gentlemen talk so much at their ease, can rarely, if ever, be performed without force.
A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.
They look upon the legal hereditary succession of their crown as among their rights, not as among their wrongs,--as a benefit, not as a grievance,--as a security for their liberty, not as a badge of servitude.
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.
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