As no water can rise higher than its spring, no establishment can have more authority than it derives from its principle; and the power of the government can with no appearance of reason go further coercively than to bind and hold down those who have once consented to their opinions.
Burke uses a metaphor to illustrate that the authority of any establishment is derived from its foundational principles.
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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.
Always acting as if in the presence of canonized forefathers, the spirit of freedom, leading in itself to misrule and excess, is tempered with an awful gravity.
But the course of succession is the healthy habit of the British Constitution.
So far is it from being true that we acquired a right by the Revolution to elect our kings, that, if we had possessed it before, the English nation did at that time most solemnly renounce and abdicate it, for themselves, and for all their…
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