These are deep questions, where great names militate against each other, where reason is perplexed, and an appeal to authorities only thickens the confusion: for high and reverend authorities lift up their heads on both sides, and there is no sure footing in the middle.
Burke reflects on the complexity of deep political questions where conflicting authorities create confusion.
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More from Edmund Burke
Governments must be abused and deranged indeed, before it can be thought of; and the prospect of the future must be as bad as the experience of the past.
We procure reverence to our civil institutions on the principle upon which Nature teaches us to revere individual men: on account of their age, and on account of those from whom they are descended.
An irregular, convulsive movement may be necessary to throw off an irregular, convulsive disease.
A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.
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