For nothing is more evident than that the crown was bound, and that no act can be made without the royal assent.
Edmund Burke
The Public Record
Edmund Burke was an Anglo-Irish writer, philosopher, and politician who is widely credited as the founder of the cultural and political philosophy of conservatism. Regarded as one of the most influential conservative thinkers and political writers of the 18th century, Burke spent the majority of his career in Great Britain and was elected as a member of Parliament (MP) from 1766 to 1794 in the House of Commons of Great Britain with the Whig Party. His writings played a significant role in influencing public views and opinions in both Great Britain and France following the French Revolution in 1789, and he remains a major figure in modern conservative circles.
gutenberg.org
They were, however, evidently mistaken; and this surplusage of theirs did not weaken the validity of the single contract, upon the known principle of law, Non solent, quæ abundant, vitiare scripturas.
They did not, therefore, call it a perfecting of the security, but an additional security, which it could not have been, if the first had been void; for the Parliament could not bind itself more than the crown had bound itself.
To this I answer, that the collateral security was meant to bind the crown, and to hold it firm to its engagements.
In Ireland such a breach on the part of the crown was much more unpardonable in administration than it would have been here.
The words of the article do this, or they do nothing; and so far as the crown had a share in passing those acts, the public faith was unquestionably broken.
They certainly bound the king and his successors.
It will now be seen, that, even if these laws could be supposed agreeable to those of Nature in these particulars, on another and almost as strong a principle they are yet unjust, as being contrary to positive compact, and the public faith…
They compelled the people to submit, by the forfeiture of all their civil rights, to the Pope's authority, in its most extravagant and unbounded sense, as a giver of kingdoms; and now they refuse even to tolerate them in the most moderate…
If this be improvement, truly I know not what can be called a depravation of society.
They are now excluded from those benefits; and, so far as civil society comprehends them, and as we have managed the matter, our persecutions are so far from being necessary to its existence, that our very reformation is made in a degree…
They were happy enough, in their opinion at least, before the change; what benefits society then had, they partook of them all.
We found the people heretics and idolaters; we have, by way of improving their condition, rendered them slaves and beggars: they remain in all the misfortune of their old errors, and all the superadded misery of their recent punishment.
To say it was not as well constituted as it ought to be is saying nothing at all to the purpose; for that assertion evidently regards improvement, not existence.
Society not only exists, but flourishes at this hour, with this superstition, in many countries, under every form of government,--in some established, in some tolerated, in others upon an equal footing.
Could a man think such an objection possible, if he had not actually heard it made,--an objection contradicted, not by hypothetical reasonings, but the clear evidence of the most decisive facts?
It does bear, and must, with the vices and the follies of men, until they actually strike at the root of order.
It considers as crimes (that is, the object of punishment) trespasses against those rules for which society was instituted.
The coercive authority of the state is limited to what is necessary for its existence.
But an opinion at once new and persecuting is a monster; because, in the very instant in which it takes a liberty of change, it does not leave to you even a liberty of perseverance.
It puts its own authority, not only of compulsion, but prepossession, the veneration of past age, as well as the activity of the present time, against the opinion only of a private man or set of men.
But when an ancient establishment begins early to persecute an innovation, it stands upon quite other grounds, and it has all the prejudices and presumptions on its side.
When, therefore, an establishment would persecute an opinion in possession, it sets against it all the powerful prejudices of human nature.
If we must resort to prepossessions for the ground of opinion, it is in the nature of man rather to defer to the wisdom of times past, whose weakness is not before his eyes, than to the present, of whose imbecility he has daily experience.
For why should I prefer your opinion of to-day to your persuasion of yesterday?
Politicians like Edmund Burke
