"But one of the first and most leading principles on which the commonwealth and the laws are consecrated, is lest the temporary possessors and life-renters in it, unmindful of what they have received from their ancestors, or of what is due to their posterity, should act as if they were the entire masters; that they should not think it among their rights to cut off the entail, or commit waste on the inheritance, by destroying at their pleasure the whole original fabric of their society; hazarding to leave to those who come after them a ruin instead of an habitation—and teaching these successors as little to respect their contrivances, as they had themselves respected the institutions of their forefathers. By this unprincipled facility of changing the state as often, and as much, and in as many ways as there are floating fancies or fashions, the whole chain and continuity of the commonwealth would be broken. No one generation could link with the other. Men would become little better than the flies of a summer."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
p. 141
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Reflections_on_the_Revolution_in_France
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Reflections on the Revolution in France
88 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Reflections on the Revolution in France →
Related Quotes
"I flatter myself that I love a manly, moral, regulated liberty as well as any gentleman of that society, be he who he…"
"At some time or other, to be sure, all the beginners of dynasties were chosen by those who called them to govern. The…"
"If the principles of the Revolution of 1688 are anywhere to be found, it is in the statute called the Declaration of …"
"A few years after this period, a second opportunity offered for asserting a right of election to the crown. On the pr…"
"So far is it from being true that we acquired a right by the Revolution to elect our kings that, if we had possessed …"
"A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation."
"It is common with them to dispute as if they were in a conflict with some of those exploded fanatics of slavery, who …"
"Humanity and compassion are ridiculed as the fruits of superstition and ignorance. Tenderness to individuals is consi…"
"The question of dethroning or, if these gentlemen like the phrase better, "cashiering kings" will always be, as it ha…"
"It is with them a war or a revolution, or it is nothing. ... They have some change in the church or state, or both, c…"