“Laws, like houses, lean on one another.”

— Edmund Burke

From the Tracts Relative to the Laws Against Popery in Ireland (c. 1766), not published during Burke's lifetime.
1760s

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Laws, like houses, lean on one another." by Edmund Burke?

Edmund Burke270

Anglo-Irish statesman 1729–1797

Related quotes

“If there is one law for the Government and another for it's subjects, one for noble and another for commoner, one for rich and another for poor, the law does not guarantee liberty for all.”

Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse (1864–1929) British sociologist

Source: Liberalism (1911), Chapter II, The Elements of Liberalism, p. 17.

“Their Lordships of the Upper House…are one member of the Parliament; and also that the Knights, Citizens and Burgesses of this House representing the whole Commons of this Realm are also another member of the same Parliament; and her Majesty the Head; and that of these three Estates doth consist the whole body of Parliament able to make laws.”

William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley (1520–1598) English statesman

Said in 1585.
Simonds D'Ewes, The Journals of all the Parliaments during the Reign of Queen Elizabeth (1682), p. 350.

“People must help one another; it is nature's law.”

Jean De La Fontaine (1621–1695) French poet, fabulist and writer.

"L'Ane et le Chien", as quoted in On a Darkling Plain (1995) by Richard Lee Byers, p. 94.

“The existence of a law is one thing, its merits or demerits is are another thing. Whether a law be, is one inquiry; whether it ought to be o whether it agree with a given or assumed test, is another and a distinct inquiry.”

John Austin (legal philosopher) (1790–1859) legal philosopher

Variant:
The existence of law is one thing; its merit or demerit is another. Whether it be or be not is one enquiry; whether it be or be not conformable to an assumed standard, is a different enquiry. A law, which actually exists, is a law, though we happen to dislike it, or though it vary from the text, by which we regulate our approbation and disapprobation.
John Austin, Austin Lectures on Jurisprudence; or The Philosophy of Positive Law, 1873, Lecture V
Source: The Province of Jurisprudence Determined (1832), p. 278