I am no peer, nor like to be,--but am in middle life, in the mass of citizens; yet I should feel for a son who married a prostituted woman, or a daughter who married a dishonorable and prostituted man, as much as any peer in the realm.
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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But still we must have laws to secure property, and still we must have ranks and distinctions and magistracy in the state, notwithstanding their manifest tendency to encourage avarice and ambition.
The dignities of magistracy are encouragements to ambition, with all the black train of villanies which attend that wicked passion.
The same laws which secure property encourage avarice; and the fences made about honest acquisition are the strong bars which secure the hoards of the miser.
It is impossible that any principle of law or government useful to the community should be established without an advantage to those who have the greatest stake in the country.
God forbid!--my part is taken: I would take my fate with the poor and low and feeble.
When, indeed, the smallest rights of the poorest people in the kingdom are in question, I would set my face against any act of pride and power countenanced by the highest that are in it; and if it should come to the last extremity, and to…
If by the aristocracy (which, indeed, comes nearer to the point) they mean an adherence to the rich and powerful against the poor and weak, this would, indeed, be a very extraordinary part.
I hold them to be of an absolute necessity in the Constitution; but I think they are only good when kept within their proper bounds.
The improvident marriage of one man becomes a tax upon the orderly and regular marriage of all the rest.
Nay, it is fundamentally unjust; for a man that breeds a family without competent means of maintenance incumbers other men with his children, and disables them so far from maintaining their own.
Therefore to enable and authorize any man to introduce citizens into the commonwealth, before a rational security can be given that he may provide for them and educate them as citizens ought to be provided for and educated, is totally…
It is most certain that men are well qualified for propagation long before they are sufficiently qualified even by bodily strength, much less by mental prudence, and by acquired skill in trades and professions, for the maintenance of a…
Matrimony is instituted not only for the propagation of men, but for their nutrition, their education, their establishment, and for the answering of all the purposes of a rational and moral being; and it is not the duty of the community to…
For the sake both of judge and jury, the controversy ought to be quieted, and the law ought to be settled in a manner clear, definitive, and constitutional, by the only authority competent to it, the authority of the legislature.
This doctrine, which, when it prevails, tends to annihilate the benefit of trial by jury, and when it is rejected by juries, tends to weaken and disgrace the authority of the judge, is not a doctrine proper for an English judicature.
But a clamor made merely for the purpose of rendering the people discontented with their situation, without an endeavor to give them a practical remedy, is indeed one of the worst acts of sedition.
The fire-bell at midnight disturbs your sleep, but it keeps you from being burned in your bed.
I am not of the opinion of those gentlemen who are against disturbing the public repose: I like a clamor, whenever there is an abuse.
Those who think that the judges living and dead are to be condemned, that your tribunals of justice are to be dishonored, that their acts and judgments on this business are to be rescinded,--they will undoubtedly vote against this bill…
Ignorance is no excuse for a judge; it is changing the nature of his crime; it is not absolving.
As I do not think these opinions of the judges to be agreeable to those principles, I wish to take the only method in which they can or ought to be corrected,--by bill.
The jury are to hear the judge: the judge is to hear the law, where it speaks plain; where it does not, he is to hear the legislature.
Juries ought to take their law from the bench only; but it is our business that they should hear nothing from the bench but what is agreeable to the principles of the Constitution.
If it becomes not difference in opinion upon law, but a trial of spirit between parties, our courts of law are no longer the temple of justice, but the amphitheatre for gladiators.
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