It is a sour, malignant, envious disposition, without taste for the reality, or for any image or representation of virtue, that sees with joy the unmerited fall of what had long nourished in splendor and in honor.
In his reflections on the French Revolution, Burke condemns the malicious pleasure taken in the downfall of traditional institutions and figures.
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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 people of England will not ape the fashions they have never tried, nor go back to those which they have found mischievous on trial.
The House of Lords, for instance, is not morally competent to dissolve the House of Commons,--no, nor even to dissolve itself, nor to abdicate, if it would, its portion in the legislature of the kingdom.
The engagement and pact of society, which generally goes by the name of the Constitution, forbids such invasion and such surrender.
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