In comparison of this, we regard all the victories and conquests of our warlike ancestors, or of our own times, as barbarous, vulgar distinctions, in which many nations, whom we look upon with little respect or value, have equalled, if not far exceeded us.
Burke downplays the significance of military victories compared to the moral and civil achievements of liberty.
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The engagement and pact of society, which generally goes by the name of the Constitution, forbids such invasion and such surrender.
A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.
Always acting as if in the presence of canonized forefathers, the spirit of freedom, leading in itself to misrule and excess, is tempered with an awful gravity.
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…
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