The hand of man could never have reared, and could never uphold them.

If we cannot say that Burke laboured in constant travail with the same perplexity, it is at least true that he was keenly alive to it, and that one of the reasons why he dreaded to see a finger laid upon a single stone of a single political edifice, was his consciousness that he saw no answer to the perpetual enigma how any of these edifices had ever been built, and how the passion, violence, and waywardness of the natural man had ever been persuaded to bow their necks to the strong yoke of a common social discipline.
Never was mysticism more unseasonable; never was an hour when men needed more carefully to remember Burke's own wise practical precept, when he was talking about the British rule in India, that we must throw a sacred veil over the beginnings of government.

Many woes might perhaps have been saved to Europe, if Burke had applied this maxim to the government of the new France.
Much has always been said about the inconsistency between Burke's enmity to the Revolution and his enmity to Lord North in one set of circumstances, and to Warren Hastings in another.

The pamphleteers of the day made selections from the speeches and tracts of his happier time, and the seeming contrast had its effect.

More candid opponents admitted then, as all competent persons admit now, that the inconsistency was merely verbal and superficial.