For immediately after the conversion of Ethelbert, King of Kent, the missionaries, who had introduced the use of letters, and came from Rome full of the ideas of the Roman civil establishment, must have observed the gross defect arising from a want of written and permanent laws.
Burke highlights the challenges faced by missionaries in establishing written laws after the conversion of Ethelbert.
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More from Edmund Burke
Whatever they are, I wish my countrymen rather to recommend to our neighbors the example of the British Constitution than to take models from them for the improvement of our own.
If any of them should happen to propose a scheme of liberty soberly limited, and defined with proper qualifications, he will be immediately outbid by his competitors, who will produce something more splendidly popular.
They come from one who has been no tool of power, no flatterer of greatness, and who in his last acts does not wish to belie the tenor of his life.
The improvements of the National Assembly are superficial, their errors fundamental.
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