The excellencies of the British Constitution had already exercised and exhausted the talents of the best thinkers and the most eloquent writers and speakers that the world ever saw.
Edmund Burke: “The excellencies of the British Constitution had already exercised and exhausted the talents of the best thinkers and…”
Editor's note · Context
Burke reflects on the profound impact of the British Constitution on thinkers and writers throughout history.
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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…
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.
But supposing they had ranked as they ought to do, and as with us they do actually, the sides of sick-beds are not the academies for forming statesmen and legislators.
A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.





