All your sophisters cannot produce anything better adapted to preserve a rational and manly freedom than the course that we have pursued, who have chosen our nature rather than our speculations, our breasts rather than our inventions, for the great conservatories and magazines of our rights and privileges.
From his critique of the French Revolution, Burke contrasts the British preservation of liberty through tradition with the French reliance on abstract theory.
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This is the spirit of our Constitution, not only in its settled course, but in all its revolutions.
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.
Their trust for the future preservation of the Constitution was not in future revolutions.
Who could flatter himself that these men, suddenly, and as it were by enchantment, snatched from the humblest rank of subordination, would not be intoxicated with their unprepared greatness?
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