It is true that to say your Constitution is what it has been is no sufficient defence for those who say it is a bad constitution.
Edmund Burke: “It is true that to say your Constitution is what it has been is no sufficient defence for those who say it is a bad…”
Editor's note · Context
He acknowledges that merely claiming a constitution has remained unchanged is not a valid defense against criticisms of its quality.
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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.
But supposing they had ranked as they ought to do, and as with us they do actually, the sides of sick-beds are not the academies for forming statesmen and legislators.
Do they mean to attaint and disable backwards all the kings that have reigned before the Revolution, and consequently to stain the throne of England with the blot of a continual usurpation?
They threw a politic, well-wrought veil over every circumstance tending to weaken the rights which in the meliorated order of succession they meant to perpetuate, or which might furnish a precedent for any future departure from what they…





