No man, in a public or private concern, can divine by what rule or principle her judgments are to be directed: nor is there to be found a professor in any university, or a practitioner in any court, who will hazard an opinion of what is or is not law in France, in any case whatever.
Burke expresses the confusion surrounding the legal system in post-revolutionary France.
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The speculative line of demarcation, where obedience ought to end and resistance must begin, is faint, obscure, and not easily definable.
Who could conceive that men who are habitually meddling, daring, subtle, active, of litigious dispositions and unquiet minds, would easily fall back into their old condition of obscure contention, and laborious, low, and unprofitable…
We procure reverence to our civil institutions on the principle upon which Nature teaches us to revere individual men: on account of their age, and on account of those from whom they are descended.
An irregular, convulsive movement may be necessary to throw off an irregular, convulsive disease.
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