Government is not made in virtue of natural rights, which may and do exist in total independence of it,--and exist in much greater clearness, and in a much greater degree of abstract perfection: but their abstract perfection is their practical defect.
Burke argues that government is not founded on abstract natural rights, whose theoretical perfection often proves to be their practical flaw.
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A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.
If all the absurd theories of lawyers and divines were to vitiate the objects in which they are conversant, we should have no law and no religion left in the world.
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.
They look on the frame of their commonwealth, such as it stands, to be of inestimable value; and they conceive the undisturbed succession of the crown to be a pledge of the stability and perpetuity of all the other members of our…
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