I tend to take the "magic itself" bit of Balinor's dialogue very, very literally, mainly because I love powerful!Merlin. Which got me thinking about this headcanon:
One time, a couple of sorcerers managed to get a pair of magic restraining cuffs on Merlin. His magic was duly restrained.
So was the sorcerers', the hedge witches', the druids', the griffins' . . .
When an extremely irate Kilgharrah showed up, sniffling like he had a head cold, they had been only too happy to take the cuffs off. Everything got back to normal.
Word got out. No one tried that again.