Above all things, I was resolved not to be guilty of tampering,--the odious vice of restless and unstable minds.
Edmund Burke: “Above all things, I was resolved not to be guilty of tampering,--the odious vice of restless and unstable minds.”
Editor's note · Context
Burke warns against the dangers of instability and the temptation to meddle with established norms.
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Their objects would be enlarged with their elevation; but their disposition, and habits, and mode of accomplishing their designs must remain the same.
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…
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 people of England will not ape the fashions they have never tried, nor go back to those which they have found mischievous on trial.





