Edmund Burke

He was careful of the privileges of his subjects, and took care to have a body of the Saxon laws, very favorable to them, digested and enforced.

Aldermen were created for life; they were then frequently made hereditary; some were vested with a power over others; and at this period we begin to hear of dukes who governed over several shires, and had many aldermen subject to them.

The throne was now the prize of faction; and Harold, the son of Godwin, having the strongest faction, carried it.

There may be a danger in straining too strongly the bonds of government.

In the mean time his Norman subjects in England, inconstant, warlike, independent, fierce by nature, fiercer by their conquest, could scarcely brook that subordination in which their safety consisted.

It is hard to say which was most unpopular, the king or his minister.

Order and justice took place, until everything was reduced to obedience; then a severe and regular oppression succeeded the former disorderly tyranny.

Every resolution of government required a sort of civil war to put it in execution.

We shall behold the people, grown desperate, call in another foreign army, with a foreign prince at its head, and throw away that liberty which they had sacrificed everything to preserve.

But though they were not able to exclude him from the succession, they had strength enough to oblige him to a solemn promise of restoring those liberties and franchises which they had always claimed without having ever enjoyed or even…

Uxorious and yet dissolute in his manners, he made no scruple frequently to violate the wives and daughters of his nobility, that rock on which tyranny has so often split.

Other acts of irregular power, in their greatest excesses, still retain the characters of sovereign authority; but here the vices of the prince intrude into the families of the subject, and, whilst they aggravate the oppression, lower the…

In civil tumults it is astonishing how little regard is paid by all parties to the honor or safety of their country.

It was of importance to the lord that the person who received the feud should be submissive to him; he had, therefore, a right to interfere in the marriage of the heiress who inherited the feud.

But the grand article, and that which cemented all the parts of the fabric of liberty, was this,--that "no freeman shall be taken, or imprisoned, or disseized, or outlawed, or banished, or in any wise destroyed, but by judgment of his…

Rash, arrogant, perfidious, irreligious, unquiet, he made a tolerable head of a party, but a bad king, and had talents fit to disturb another's government, not to support his own.

Many reasons are alleged by its authors in its favor, grounded on the state of their affairs; none whatever are assigned for the alteration.

The Company might suffer above, the natives might suffer below; the intermediate party must profit to the prejudice of both.

Since the establishment of the Company's influence in Bengal, no Europeans, of any rank whatever, have been subject to the process of the country judicature; and whether they act avowedly for themselves, and take farms in their own name…

The same influence that screened an European from the jurisdiction of the country courts would have equally protected his native agent and representative.

For many years past the Company's servants have presided in those courts, and in comparison with their authority the native authority is nothing.

It is plain that there can be no life and vigor in any business under a monopoly so constituted; nor can the true productive resources of the country, in so large an article of its commerce, ever come to be fully known.

But much doubt may arise whether this monopoly will be found advantageous to the Company either in the one capacity or the other.

It was expected in Bengal that some strong measures would have immediately been taken to preserve the just rights of the king and of the Court of Directors; as this proceeding, unaccompanied with the severest animadversion, manifestly…

Much more truly was his conduct a virtual resignation of his lawful office, and at the same time an usurpation of a situation which did not belong to him, to hold a subordinate office, and to refuse to act according to its duties.