It is a serious thing to have a connection with a people who live only under positive, arbitrary, and changeable institutions,--and those not perfected nor supplied nor explained by any common, acknowledged rule of moral science.
Burke emphasizes the seriousness of engaging with a society governed by arbitrary laws.
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More from Edmund Burke
Do they mean to attaint and disable backwards all the kings that have reigned before the Revolution, and consequently to stain the throne of England with the blot of a continual usurpation?
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…
This idea of a liberal descent inspires us with a sense of habitual native dignity, which prevents that upstart insolence almost inevitably adhering to and disgracing those who are the first acquirers of any distinction.
A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.
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