The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 03 (of 12)Burke, Edmund
History
The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 03 (of 12)
Burke, Edmund
Great Britain -- Politics and government -- 1760-1820; Political science -- Early works to 1800
Whatever may be the success of evasion in explaining away the gross
error _fact_, which supposes that his Majesty (though he holds it in
concurrence with the wishes) owes his crown to the choice of his people,
yet nothing can evade their full, explicit declaration concerning the
principle of a right in the people to choose,--which right is directly
maintained, and tenaciously adhered to. All the oblique insinuations
concerning election bottom in this proposition, and are referable to it.
Lest the foundation of the king's exclusive legal title should pass for
a mere rant of adulatory freedom, the political divine proceeds
dogmatically to assert,[80] that, by the principles of the Revolution,
the people of England have acquired three fundamental rights, all of
which, with him, compose one system, and lie together in one short
sentence: namely, that we have acquired a right
1. "To choose our own governors."
2. "To cashier them for misconduct."
3. "To frame a government for ourselves."
This new, and hitherto unheard-of bill of rights, though made in the
name of the whole people, belongs to those gentlemen and their faction
only. The body of the people of England have no share in it. They
utterly disclaim it. They will resist the practical assertion of it with
their lives and fortunes. They are bound to do so by the laws of their
country, made at the time of that very Revolution which is appealed to
in favor of the fictitious rights claimed by the society which abuses
its name.
These gentlemen of the Old Jewry, in all their reasonings on the
Revolution of 1688, have a revolution which happened in England about
forty years before, and the late French Revolution, so much before their
eyes and in their hearts, that they are constantly confounding all the
three together. It is necessary that we should separate what they
confound. We must recall their erring fancies to the _acts_ of the
Revolution which we revere, for the discovery of its true _principles_.
If the _principles_ of the Revolution of 1688 are anywhere to be found,
it is in the statute called the _Declaration of Right_. In that most
wise, sober, and considerate declaration, drawn up by great lawyers and
great statesmen, and not by warm and inexperienced enthusiasts, not one
word is said, nor one suggestion made, of a general right "to choose our
own _governors_, to cashier them for misconduct, and to _form_ a
government for _ourselves_."
This Declaration of Right (the act of the 1st of William and Mary, sess.
2, ch. 2) is the corner-stone of our Constitution, as reinforced,
explained, improved, and in its fundamental principles forever settled.
It is called "An act for declaring the rights and liberties of the
subject, and for _settling_ the _succession_ of the crown." You will
observe that these rights and this succession are declared in one body,
and bound indissolubly together.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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