Allow that to be the true policy of the British system, then most of the faults with which that system stands charged will appear to be, not imperfections into which it has inadvertently fallen, but excellencies which it has studiously sought.
Burke suggests that many perceived faults of the British system are actually intentional features.
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More from Edmund Burke
An irregular, convulsive movement may be necessary to throw off an irregular, convulsive disease.
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.
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.
A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.
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