For if the monks contributed to the fall of science in the Roman empire, it is certain, that the introduction of learning and civility into this northern world is entirely owing to their labours.
Burke argues that while monks may have contributed to the decline of science, they were also responsible for the revival of learning in the north.
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Their trust for the future preservation of the Constitution was not in future revolutions.
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…
But supposing they had ranked as they ought to do, and as with us they do actually, the sides of sick-beds are not the academies for forming statesmen and legislators.
All your sophisters cannot produce anything better adapted to preserve a rational and manly freedom than the course that we have pursued, who have chosen our nature rather than our speculations, our breasts rather than our inventions, for…
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