I shall be content to be brought to shame before your Lordships, if the prisoner at your bar can show me one passage where the assumption of arbitrary power is even hinted at by this great conqueror.
Burke challenges the notion of arbitrary power by demanding evidence from the prosecution.
Share
More from Edmund Burke
Who could flatter himself that these men, suddenly, and as it were by enchantment, snatched from the humblest rank of subordination, would not be intoxicated with their unprepared greatness?
Governments must be abused and deranged indeed, before it can be thought of; and the prospect of the future must be as bad as the experience of the past.
But the king of Great Britain obeys no other person; all other persons are individually, and collectively too, under him, and owe to him a legal obedience.
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.
Other voices in this conversation
