of expediency. His opponents argued that, since men are by nature equal,
it must follow that they have an equal right to self-government. To
Burke, the admission of this principle would have meant the overthrow of
the British constitution. Its implication was that every institution not
of immediate popular origin should be destroyed. To secure their ends,
he thought, the radicals were compelled to preach the injustice of those
institutions and thus to injure that affection for government upon which
peace and security depend. Here was an effort to bring all institutions
to the test of logic which he thought highly dangerous. "No rational man
ever did govern himself," he said, "by abstractions and universals." The
question for him was not the abstract rightness of the system upon some
set of _a priori_ principles but whether, on the whole, that system
worked for the happiness of the community. He did not doubt that it did;
and to overthrow a structure so nobly tested by the pressure of events
in favor of some theories outside historic experience seemed to him
ruinous to society. Government, for him, was the general harmony of
diverse interests; and the continual adjustments and exquisite
modifications of which it stood in need were admirably discovered in the
existing system. Principles were thus unimportant compared to the
problem of their application. "The major," he said of all political
premises, "makes a pompous figure in the battle, but the victory depends
upon the little minor of circumstances."

To abstract natural right he therefore opposed prescription. The
presumption of wisdom is on the side of the past, and when we change,
we act at our peril. "Prescription," he said in 1782, "is the most solid
of all titles, not only to property, but to what is to secure that
property, to government." Because he saw the State organically he was
impressed by the smallness both of the present moment and the
individual's thought. It is built upon the wisdom of the past for "the