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.
Burke explains that civil institutions earn respect through their age and historical lineage, mirroring the natural reverence given to older individuals and their ancestry.
Share
More from Edmund Burke
By adhering in this manner and on those principles to our forefathers, we are guided, not by the superstition of antiquarians, but by the spirit of philosophic analogy.
They threw a politic, well-wrought veil over every circumstance tending to weaken the rights which in the meliorated order of succession they meant to perpetuate, or which might furnish a precedent for any future departure from what they…
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.
As he is not to obey us, but we are to obey the law in him, our Constitution has made no sort of provision towards rendering him, as a servant, in any degree responsible.
Other voices in this conversation
