"We owe our present happiness and prosperity, which has never been equalled in the annals of mankind, to a mixture of monarchical government. We feel and know we are happy under that form of government. We consider it as our first duty to maintain and reverence the British constitution, which, for wise and just reasons of lasting and internal policy, attaches inviolability to the sacred person of the Sovereign, though, at the same time, by the responsibility it has annexed to government, by the check of a wise system of laws, and by a mixture of aristocratic and democratical power in the frame of legislation, it has equally exempted itself from the danger arising from the exercise of absolute power on the one hand, and the still more dangerous contagion of popular licentiousness on the other. The equity of our laws, and the freedom of our political system, have been the envy of every surrounding nation. In this country no man, in consequence of his riches or rank, is so high as to be above the reach of the laws, and no individual is so poor or inconsiderable as not to be within their protection. It is the boast of the law of England, that it affords equal security and protection to the high and the low, to the rich and the poor."
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Prime Ministers of the United KingdomPoliticians from EnglandLawyers from EnglandPeople from LondonChancellors of the Exchequer
Original Language: English
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Speech in the House of Commons (1 February 1793), quoted in The Speeches of the Right Honourable William Pitt, in the House of Commons. Vol. II. (1806), pp. 96-97
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Pitt_the_Younger
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William Pitt the Younger
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