"Tyranny Absolves all faith; and who invades our rights, However his own commence, can never be But an usurper"
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“Tyranny absolves all faith” is a moral trapdoor disguised as a principle. Brooke is arguing that oppression doesn’t merely injure people; it voids the social contract itself. “Faith” here isn’t religious piety so much as public trust: the everyday willingness to believe promises, obey laws, and accept authority as legitimate. Under tyranny, that credibility evaporates. The line doesn’t romanticize rebellion, but it gives it an ethical alibi: if power becomes predatory, the duty to keep believing in it dissolves.
The second clause sharpens into an indictment of pretexts. “Who invades our rights, however his own commence” targets the classic move of would-be rulers: claiming a lawful origin, a noble cause, a sacred mandate. Brooke’s point is that legitimacy is not hereditary or self-declared; it’s maintained through restraint. Once a leader crosses the boundary into rights-violation, the origin story stops mattering. The word “commence” suggests an inauguration, a founding, a beginning that might have been clean. It’s also a reminder that every regime has a starting myth, and myths are cheap compared to conduct.
Calling such a figure “but an usurper” is a rhetorical demotion. Not a complicated sovereign with a few regrettable excesses, just a thief in ceremonial clothing. In an 18th-century British and Irish context where debates about liberty, parliamentary authority, and colonial power were boiling, Brooke’s sentence works as a portable verdict: it turns political analysis into a simple test of legitimacy, measured by rights rather than rhetoric.
The second clause sharpens into an indictment of pretexts. “Who invades our rights, however his own commence” targets the classic move of would-be rulers: claiming a lawful origin, a noble cause, a sacred mandate. Brooke’s point is that legitimacy is not hereditary or self-declared; it’s maintained through restraint. Once a leader crosses the boundary into rights-violation, the origin story stops mattering. The word “commence” suggests an inauguration, a founding, a beginning that might have been clean. It’s also a reminder that every regime has a starting myth, and myths are cheap compared to conduct.
Calling such a figure “but an usurper” is a rhetorical demotion. Not a complicated sovereign with a few regrettable excesses, just a thief in ceremonial clothing. In an 18th-century British and Irish context where debates about liberty, parliamentary authority, and colonial power were boiling, Brooke’s sentence works as a portable verdict: it turns political analysis into a simple test of legitimacy, measured by rights rather than rhetoric.
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| Topic | Freedom |
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