As to government, if I might recommend a prudent caution to them, it would be, to innovate as little as possible, upon speculation, in establishments from which, as they stand, they experience no material inconvenience to the repose of the country,--quieta non movere.
Burke advises government to avoid unnecessary changes to established systems that are functioning well.
Share
More from Edmund Burke
Their trust for the future preservation of the Constitution was not in future revolutions.
The House of Lords, for instance, is not morally competent to dissolve the House of Commons,--no, nor even to dissolve itself, nor to abdicate, if it would, its portion in the legislature of the kingdom.
Governments must be abused and deranged indeed, before it can be thought of; and the prospect of the future must be as bad as the experience of the past.
But supposing they had ranked as they ought to do, and as with us they do actually, the sides of sick-beds are not the academies for forming statesmen and legislators.
Other voices in this conversation
