That confidence, of all public virtues, was the most dangerous, and jealousy in an House of Commons, of all public vices, the most tolerable,--- especially where the number and the charge of standing armies in time of peace was the question.
Burke argues that excessive confidence can be harmful in governance, while a degree of jealousy can be beneficial, particularly regarding military matters.
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More from Edmund Burke
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.
When such an unwarrantable maxim is once established, that no throne is lawful but the elective, no one act of the princes who preceded this era of fictitious election can be valid.
Though a king may abdicate for his own person, he cannot abdicate for the monarchy.
Ill would our ancestors at the Revolution have deserved their fame for wisdom, if they had found no security for their freedom, but in rendering their government feeble in its operations and precarious in its tenure,--if they had been able…
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