Your Constitution is all sail and no anchor.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that a constitution may be full of ideals and possibilities but lacks the foundational stability needed to uphold them.
In this quote, Thomas B. Macaulay critiques a constitution that is elaborate in its declarations and principles ('all sail'), yet lacks the robust mechanisms or principles ('no anchor') required to ensure stability and adherence to those ideals. This implies that without a solid foundation, even the most well-articulated laws can become ineffective or lead to disorder.
In practice
During a debate on governmental reform, one might use this quote to illustrate the importance of a functional and grounded legal framework.
None of the modes by which a magistrate is appointed, popular election, the accident of the lot, or the accident of birth, affords, as far as we can perceive, much security for his being wiser than any of his neighbours. The chance of his being wiser than all his neighbours together is still smaller.
I wish I was as sure of anything as he is of everything.
To punish a man because he has committed a crime, or because he is believed, though unjustly, to have committed a crime, is not persecution. To punish a man, because we infer from the nature of some doctrine which he holds, or from the conduct of other persons who hold the same doctrines with him, that he will commit a crime, is persecution, and is, in every case, foolish and wicked.
Mere negation, mere Epicurean infidelity, as Lord Bacon most justly observes, has never disturbed the peace of the world. It furnishes no motive for action; it inspires no enthusiasm; it has no missionaries, no crusades, no martyrs.
What a blessing it is to love books as I love them;- to be able to converse with the dead, and to live amidst the unreal!
And to say that society ought to be governed by the opinion of the wisest and best, though true, is useless. Whose opinion is to decide who are the wisest and best?
Trump's victory clearly appears to stem from a sense of economic powerlessness, or a fear of losing power, among his supporters. To them, his simple slogan, 'Make America great again,' sounds like 'Make You great again': economic power will be given to the multitudes without taking anything away from the already successful.
Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has no heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains.
I hereby accuse the North American empire of being the biggest menace to our planet.
In a dying civilization, political prestige is the reward not of the shrewdest diagnostician, but of the man with the best bedside manner.
Fundamentalists are not friends of democracy. And that includes your fundamentalists in the United States.
There is an important sense in which government is distinctive from administration. One is perpetual, the other is temporary and changeable. A man may be loyal to his government and yet oppose the particular principles and methods of administration.
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