If the crime is a small one, then you ought to be angry with the crime and reluctant to punish the criminal; but when there are great crimes, then you may hate them together.
Edmund Burke: “If the crime is a small one, then you ought to be angry with the crime and reluctant to punish the criminal; but when…”
Editor's note · Context
Burke discusses the appropriate emotional response to crimes of varying severity, advocating for a strong reaction to significant offenses.
Share
More from Edmund Burke
Who could conceive that men who are habitually meddling, daring, subtle, active, of litigious dispositions and unquiet minds, would easily fall back into their old condition of obscure contention, and laborious, low, and unprofitable…
A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.
If kings who did not owe their crown to the choice of their people had no title to make laws, what will become of the statute De tallagio non concedendo? of the Petition of Right? of the act of Habeas Corpus?
Their objects would be enlarged with their elevation; but their disposition, and habits, and mode of accomplishing their designs must remain the same.





