Now that they are no longer a matter of sagacity, but of experience, of recent experience, of our own experience, it would be unjustifiable to go back to the records of other times to instruct us to manage what they never enabled us to foresee.
Burke emphasizes the importance of learning from recent experiences rather than relying solely on historical records.
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More from Edmund Burke
But the course of succession is the healthy habit of the British Constitution.
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 an absurd theory on one side of a question forms no justification for alleging a false fact or promulgating mischievous maxims on the other.
The engagement and pact of society, which generally goes by the name of the Constitution, forbids such invasion and such surrender.
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