All this unhappy race of little farmers and tillers of the soil were driven like a herd of cattle by his extortioners, and compelled by imprisonments, by fetters, and by cruel whippings, to engage for more than the whole of their substance or possible acquisition.
Burke condemns the brutal treatment of farmers by extortionate officials, likening them to cattle.
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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.
By adhering in this manner and on those principles to our forefathers, we are guided, not by the superstition of antiquarians, but by the spirit of philosophic analogy.
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.
They look on the frame of their commonwealth, such as it stands, to be of inestimable value; and they conceive the undisturbed succession of the crown to be a pledge of the stability and perpetuity of all the other members of our…
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