We have not been drawn and trussed, in order that we may be filled, like stuffed birds in a museum, with chaff and rags, and paltry, blurred shreds of paper about the rights of man.
Burke uses a vivid metaphor to criticize the abstract and artificial nature of revolutionary doctrines like the "rights of man," contrasting them with the organic development of British society.
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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.
They look upon the legal hereditary succession of their crown as among their rights, not as among their wrongs,--as a benefit, not as a grievance,--as a security for their liberty, not as a badge of servitude.
Who could doubt but that, at any expense to the state, of which they understood nothing, they must pursue their private interests, which they understood but too well?
The speculative line of demarcation, where obedience ought to end and resistance must begin, is faint, obscure, and not easily definable.
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