We know that a swarm of locusts, although individually despicable, can render a country more desolate than Genghis Khân or Tamerlane.
Edmund Burke: “We know that a swarm of locusts, although individually despicable, can render a country more desolate than Genghis Khân…”
Editor's note · Context
Burke illustrates how seemingly insignificant entities can collectively cause great destruction.
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No experience has taught us that in any other course or method than that of an hereditary crown our liberties can be regularly perpetuated and preserved sacred as our hereditary right.
Who could conceive that men who are habitually meddling, daring, subtle, active, of litigious dispositions and unquiet minds, would easily fall back into their old condition of obscure contention, and laborious, low, and unprofitable…
The speculative line of demarcation, where obedience ought to end and resistance must begin, is faint, obscure, and not easily definable.
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.





