All the pleasing illusions, which made power gentle, and obedience liberal, which harmonized the different shades of life, and which, by a bland assimilation, incorporated into politics the sentiments which beautify and soften private society, are to be dissolved by this new conquering empire of light and reason.
Burke reflects on the impact of enlightenment thinking on traditional values and social harmony.
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The people of England will not ape the fashions they have never tried, nor go back to those which they have found mischievous on trial.
If all the absurd theories of lawyers and divines were to vitiate the objects in which they are conversant, we should have no law and no religion left in the world.
Though a king may abdicate for his own person, he cannot abdicate for the monarchy.
So far is it from being true that we acquired a right by the Revolution to elect our kings, that, if we had possessed it before, the English nation did at that time most solemnly renounce and abdicate it, for themselves, and for all their…
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