Justice & Law Quote by Henry Benedict Stuart

Loyalty here reads less like a feeling than a job description. Henry Benedict Stuart is writing in the careful, varnished idiom of dynastic politics, where “justice” doesn’t mean impartial law so much as legitimate bloodline. By insisting on “the justice of the cause of Prince Edouard,” he’s not arguing a case; he’s reaffirming a claim: the Stuarts’ right to the British throne, the Jacobite story that never fully died even after its armies did.

The sentence is built to perform sincerity, not merely express it. “Adding insurances of greatest sincerity” is an almost legalistic flourish, a way of anticipating doubt. By the late 18th century, the Stuart cause was increasingly ceremonial, kept alive by exile communities, European courts, and family members who had to make faith sound like strategy. Henry, a cardinal and the last serious institutional anchor of Jacobitism, can’t afford to sound desperate. So he leans on repetition - “help it and support it,” “on all occasions,” “marks of the same feelings” - as if piling up assurances can substitute for actual leverage.

The most revealing move is the pivot from Edouard to “the King his father.” Edouard (Bonnie Prince Charlie) still carries the romance; the father (James “III” to Jacobites) carries the legal continuity. Henry is signaling that his support is not just for a charismatic figure but for the dynastic line itself. Subtext: whatever the world thinks of Edouard’s personal decline, the family’s claim remains intact, and Henry intends to keep it respectable - a cause defended with etiquette when it can no longer be defended with force.