The levellers, therefore, only change and pervert the natural order of things: they load the edifice of society by setting up in the air what the solidity of the structure requires to be on the ground.
Burke uses a structural metaphor to explain how attempts at social leveling disrupt the natural order of society.
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More from Edmund Burke
The improvements of the National Assembly are superficial, their errors fundamental.
Our people will find employment enough for a truly patriotic, free, and independent spirit, in guarding what they possess from violation.
They will become flatterers instead of legislators,--the instruments, not the guides of the people.
Let us add, if we please, but let us preserve what they have left; and standing on the firm ground of the British Constitution, let us be satisfied to admire, rather than attempt to follow in their desperate flights, the aëronauts of…
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