But I know, too, that those who blame them for want of enterprise have shown no activity at all against the common enemy: all their skill and all their spirit have been shown only in weakening, dividing, and indeed destroying their allies.
Burke criticizes those who blame others for inaction while failing to take initiative themselves against common threats.
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More from Edmund Burke
Their trust for the future preservation of the Constitution was not in future revolutions.
The ceremony of cashiering kings, of which these gentlemen talk so much at their ease, can rarely, if ever, be performed without force.
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.
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