He is sensible that his business is not to innovate, out to secure and to establish,--that reformations at this day are attempts at best of ambiguous utility.
Edmund Burke: “He is sensible that his business is not to innovate, out to secure and to establish,--that reformations at this day are…”
Editor's note · Context
Burke argues that the role of the sovereign is to secure and establish rather than innovate.
Share
More from Edmund Burke
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…
They have little regard to the obvious consequences of their doctrine, though they may see that it leaves positive authority in very few of the positive institutions of this country.
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?
If kings who did not owe their crown to the choice of their people had no title to make laws, what will become of the statute De tallagio non concedendo? of the Petition of Right? of the act of Habeas Corpus?





