The path of history is strewn with undistributed middles; and it is possible that in the clash between his attitude and that of Bentham there were the materials for a fuller synthesis in a later time.

Certainly there is no more admirable corrective in historical politics that the contrast they afford.
It is easy to praise Burke and easier still to miss the greatness of his effort.

Perspective apart, he is destined doubtless to live rather as the author of some maxims that few statesmen will dare to forget than as the creator of a system which, even in its unfinished implications, is hardly less gigantic than that of Hobbes or Bentham.

His very defects are lessons in themselves.

His unhesitating inability to see how dangerous is the concentration of property is standing proof that men are over-prone to judge the rightness of a State by their own wishes.
His own contempt for the results of reasonable inquiry is a ceaseless lesson in the virtue of consistent scrutiny of our inheritance.