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Burke, Edmund, 1729-1797

"The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 04 (of 12)"

"
"Mr. Burke talks about what he calls an hereditary crown, as if it were
some production of Nature,--or as if, like time, it had a power to
operate, not only independently, but in spite of man,--or as if it were
a thing or a subject universally consented to. Alas! it has none of
those properties, but is the reverse of them all. It is a thing in
imagination, the propriety of which is more than doubted, and the
legality of which in a few years will be denied."
"If I ask the farmer, the manufacturer, the merchant, the tradesman, and
down through all the occupations of life to the common laborer, what
service monarchy is to him, he can give me no answer. If I ask him what
monarchy is, he believes it is something like a sinecure."
"The French Constitution says, that the right of war and peace is in the
nation. Where else should it reside, but in those who are to pay the
expense?
"In England, this right is said to reside in a _metaphor_, shown at the
Tower for sixpence or a shilling apiece: so are the lions; and it would
be a step nearer to reason to say it resided in them, for any inanimate
metaphor is no more than a hat or a cap.


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