The state, in its essence, must be moral and just: and it may be so, though a tyrant or usurper should be accidentally at the head of it.
Edmund Burke: “The state, in its essence, must be moral and just: and it may be so, though a tyrant or usurper should be accidentally…”
Editor's note · Context
Burke argues that a state's moral integrity can exist even under tyrannical leadership.
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I think our happy situation owing to our Constitution,--but owing to the whole of it, and not to any part singly,--owing in a great measure to what we have left standing in our several reviews and reformations, as well as to what we have…
If any of them should happen to propose a scheme of liberty soberly limited, and defined with proper qualifications, he will be immediately outbid by his competitors, who will produce something more splendidly popular.
They will become flatterers instead of legislators,--the instruments, not the guides of the people.
The improvements of the National Assembly are superficial, their errors fundamental.





