All those who have affections which lead them to the conservation of civil order would recognize, even in its cradle, the child as legitimate, which has been produced from those principles of cogent expediency to which all just governments owe their birth, and on which they justify their continuance.
Edmund Burke: “All those who have affections which lead them to the conservation of civil order would recognize, even in its cradle…”
Editor's note · Context
Burke argues that legitimate governments, born from principles of practical necessity, are recognized and supported by those who value the preservation of civil order.
Share
More from Edmund Burke
A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.
Unquestionably there was at the Revolution, in the person of King William, a small and a temporary deviation from the strict order of a regular hereditary succession; but it is against all genuine principles of jurisprudence to draw a…
But the king of Great Britain obeys no other person; all other persons are individually, and collectively too, under him, and owe to him a legal obedience.
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.





