As soon as he had so secured them against receiving bribes, he was resolved to make them inefficient,--a good way to secure them against bribes, by taking from them the power of bribe-worthy service.
Burke critiques the inefficacy of a committee that is bound by oaths against bribery while simultaneously stripped of their power to act.
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But the course of succession is the healthy habit of the British Constitution.
The House of Lords, for instance, is not morally competent to dissolve the House of Commons,--no, nor even to dissolve itself, nor to abdicate, if it would, its portion in the legislature of the kingdom.
Unquestionably there was at the Revolution, in the person of King William, a small and a temporary deviation from the strict order of a regular hereditary succession; but it is against all genuine principles of jurisprudence to draw a…
The engagement and pact of society, which generally goes by the name of the Constitution, forbids such invasion and such surrender.
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