Small, indeed, was the security which the corporation of London enjoyed before the act of William and Mary, and which all the other corporations, secured by no statute, enjoy at this hour, if strict law was employed against them.
Burke critiques the inadequate legal protections for the corporation of London before a significant legislative act.
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More from Edmund Burke
But an absurd theory on one side of a question forms no justification for alleging a false fact or promulgating mischievous maxims on the other.
Who could doubt but that, at any expense to the state, of which they understood nothing, they must pursue their private interests, which they understood but too well?
The people of England will not ape the fashions they have never tried, nor go back to those which they have found mischievous on trial.
If kings who did not owe their crown to the choice of their people had no title to make laws, what will become of the statute De tallagio non concedendo? of the Petition of Right? of the act of Habeas Corpus?
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