Historical voices

Against these their rights of men let no government look for security in the length of its continuance, or in the justice and lenity of its administration.

They despise experience as the wisdom of unlettered men; and as for the rest, they have wrought under ground a mine that will blow up, at one grand explosion, all examples of antiquity, all precedents, charters, and acts of Parliament.

Whilst they are possessed by these notions, it is vain to talk to them of the practice of their ancestors, the fundamental laws of their country, the fixed form of a Constitution whose merits are confirmed by the solid test of long…

It is no wonder, therefore, that, with these ideas of everything in their Constitution and government at home, either in Church or State, as illegitimate and usurped, or at best as a vain mockery, they look abroad with an eager and…

Something they must destroy, or they seem to themselves to exist for no purpose.

Indeed, their principle, if you observe it with any attention, goes much further than to an alteration in the election of the House of Commons; for, if popular representation, or choice, is necessary to the legitimacy of all government…

You will smile here at the consistency of those democratists who, when they are not on their guard, treat the humbler part of the community with the greatest contempt, whilst, at the same time, they pretend to make them the depositories of…

Is what remains of the plundered stock of public revenue to be employed in the wild project of maintaining two armies to watch over and to fight with each other?

It is certainly not prudent to discredit the authority of an example we mean to follow.

However, I considered that treasure rather as a possession to be secured than as a prize to be contended for.

I was, indeed, aware that a jealous, ever-waking vigilance, to guard the treasure of our liberty, not only from invasion, but from decay and corruption, was our best wisdom and our first duty.

I can as little recommend to any other nation a conduct grounded on such principles and productive of such effects.

All this policy in the end will appear as feeble as it is now violent.

They have forgot, that, when they framed democratic governments, they had virtually dismembered their country.

In this they will see none of the equality, under the pretence of which they have been tempted to throw off their allegiance to their sovereign, as well as the ancient constitution of their country.

When the National Assembly has completed its work, it will have accomplished its ruin.

This sort of discourse does well enough with the lamp-post for its second: to men who may reason calmly it is ridiculous The will of the many, and their interest, must very often differ; and great will be the difference when they make an…

Some decent, regulated preëminence, some preference (not exclusive appropriation) given to birth, is neither unnatural, nor unjust, nor impolitic.

Let those large proprietors be what they will, (and they have their chance of being amongst the best,) they are, at the very worst, the ballast in the vessel of the commonwealth.

It makes our weakness subservient to our virtue; it grafts benevolence even upon avarice.

The power of perpetuating our property in our families is one of the most valuable and interesting circumstances belonging to it, and that which tends the most to the perpetuation of society itself.

But the many are not capable of making this calculation; and those who lead them to rapine never intend this distribution.

But as ability is a vigorous and active principle, and as property is sluggish, inert, and timid, it never can be safe from the invasions of ability, unless it be, out of all proportion, predominant in the representation.

Nothing is a due and adequate representation of a state, that does not represent its ability, as well as its property.