It cuts up by the roots, not only all idea of forcible resistance, but even of civil opposition.
Edmund Burke: “It cuts up by the roots, not only all idea of forcible resistance, but even of civil opposition.”
Editor's note · Context
Burke asserts that certain beliefs undermine the possibility of civil opposition and resistance.
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If all the absurd theories of lawyers and divines were to vitiate the objects in which they are conversant, we should have no law and no religion left in the world.
Their trust for the future preservation of the Constitution was not in future revolutions.
They have little regard to the obvious consequences of their doctrine, though they may see that it leaves positive authority in very few of the positive institutions of this country.
A few years ago I should be ashamed to overload a matter so capable of supporting itself by the then unnecessary support of any argument; but this seditious, unconstitutional doctrine is now publicly taught, avowed, and printed.





