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Burke, Edmund, 1729-1797

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

Whether
it sounds worse to my ear, by not being accustomed to hear such
despotism, than what it does to the ear of another person, I am not so
well a judge of; but of its abominable principle I am at no loss to
judge."
These societies of modern Whigs push their insolence as far as it can
go. In order to prepare the minds of the people for treason and
rebellion, they represent the king as tainted with principles of
despotism, from the circumstance of his having dominions in Germany. In
direct defiance of the most notorious truth, they describe his
government there to be a despotism; whereas it is a free Constitution,
in which the states of the Electorate have their part in the government:
and this privilege has never been infringed by the king, or, that I have
heard of, by any of his predecessors. The Constitution of the Electoral
dominions has, indeed, a double control, both from the laws of the
Empire and from the privileges of the country. Whatever rights the king
enjoys as Elector have been always parentally exercised, and the
calumnies of these scandalous societies have not been authorized by a
single complaint of oppression.


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