Whilst these parties disagreed in the choice of a master, by contending for a choice in their subjection they grew imperceptibly into freedom, and passed through the medium of faction and anarchy into regular commonwealths.
Edmund Burke
The Public Record
Edmund Burke was an Anglo-Irish writer, philosopher, and politician who is widely credited as the founder of the cultural and political philosophy of conservatism. Regarded as one of the most influential conservative thinkers and political writers of the 18th century, Burke spent the majority of his career in Great Britain and was elected as a member of Parliament (MP) from 1766 to 1794 in the House of Commons of Great Britain with the Whig Party. His writings played a significant role in influencing public views and opinions in both Great Britain and France following the French Revolution in 1789, and he remains a major figure in modern conservative circles.
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The moderation with which the Popes at first exerted this empire made its growth unfelt until it could no longer be opposed; and the policy of later Popes, building on the piety of the first, continually increased it: and they made use of…
From Rome the whole Western world had received its Christianity; she was the asylum of what learning had escaped the general desolation; and even in her ruins she preserved something of the majesty of her ancient greatness.
The only method of paying them was by allotting lands for their subsistence whilst they remained in his service.
In money they could not, because there was very little money then in Europe, and scarce any part of that little came into the prince's coffers.
But as a fruitless revenge could answer little purpose to the parties injured and was ruinous to the public peace, by the interposal of good offices they were prevailed upon to accept some composition in lieu of the blood of the aggressor…
The punishment with death was very rare,--with torture unknown.
The order of our courts, the discipline of our jury, by which it is become so elaborate a contrivance, and the introduction of a sort of scientific reason in the law, have been the work of ages.
The Saxons were extremely imperfect in their ideas of law,--the civil institutions of the Romans, who were the legislators of mankind, having never reached them.
A man who did not seem to have the good opinion of those among whom he lived was judged to be guilty, or at least capable of being guilty, of every crime.
The innocency of some who suffered could never be known with certainty.
Many persons, from a dread of the event, chose to discover rather than to endure the trial.
It was in effect showing the accused an indulgence to give him this chance, even such a chance as it was, of an acquittal; and it was certainly much milder than the torture, which is used, with full as little certainty of producing its…
What presumption can arise from the event of the water ordeal, in which no callosity of hands, no bravery, no skill in arms, could be in any degree serviceable?
But supposing the effect of hot iron to be so slight even on the most callous hands, of which, however, there is reason to doubt, yet we can hardly admit this reasoning, when we consider that women were subjected to this fire ordeal, and…
The greatest genius which has enlightened this age seems in this affair to have been carried by the sharpness of his wit into a subtilty hardly to be justified by the way of thinking of that unpolished period.
Is there any reason for this extraordinary distinction? or must we resolve it solely into the irregular caprices of the human mind?
Their trials were so many conjurations, and the magical ceremonies of barbarity and heathenism entered into law and religion.
But when the first fervors of religion began to decay, and fraud and the temptations to fraud to increase, they trusted no longer to the conscience of the party.
They judged every controversy either by the conscience of the parties, or by the country's opinion of it, or what they judged an appeal to Providence.
The Saxon laws, imperfect and various as they were, served in some tolerable degree a people who had by their Constitution an eye on each other's concerns, and decided almost all matters of any doubt amongst them by methods which, however…
One thing, however, is, I think, clear from the whole tenor of their government, and even from the tenor of the Norman Constitution long after: that their Witenagemotes or Parliaments were unformed, and that the rights by which the members…
The argument is drawn from the poverty of the boroughs, which ever since the Conquest have been of no consideration, and yet send members to Parliament; which they could not do, but by some privileges inherent in them, on account of a…
They might be taxed individually at what sum the king thought fit to demand; or they might be discharged by offering the king a sum, from which, if he accepted it, the citizens were not at liberty to recede; and in either case the demand…
A notion of this kind, so contrary to the simplicity of the Saxon ideas of government, and to the genius of that people, who held the arts and commerce in so much contempt, must be founded on such appearances as no other explanation can…
Politicians like Edmund Burke
