People endure sufferable evils rather than abolish familiar forms of government.

Evidence

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. — Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence, 7

Categorization

• XREF: A counterweight to the revolutionary right of abolition — a Burkean caution about change lodged inside the revolutionary document itself, useful for the course’s treatment of judicial restraint and stare decisis.
• APHORISMS: A durable piece of political wisdom: habitual endurance of tolerable wrongs is the default of political life.