Whatever opinion they have on your subject is very faint and indistinct; and if there is anything like a formed notion, even that amounts to no more than a sort of humming that remains on their ears of the burden of the old song about…
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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They mean you no ill whatever; and they are too ignorant of the state of your affairs to be able to do you any good.
As to the people at large in this country, I am sure they have no disposition to intermeddle in your affairs.
Whilst government publicly avows hostility to that people, as a part of a regular system, there is no road they can take which does not lead to their ruin.
If they remonstrate against persecution, they propagate rebellion.
If they let things take their course, they will be represented as colluding with sedition, or at least tacitly encouraging it.
If they endeavor by their influence to keep a dissatisfied laity in quiet, they are in danger of losing the little credit they possess, by being considered as the instruments of a government adverse to the civil interests of their flock.
When religion is brought into a question of civil and political arrangement, it must be considered more politically than theologically, at least by us, who are nothing more than mere laymen.
I push this point no further, and only adduce this example (a pretty strong one, and fully in point) to show what I take to be the madness and folly of driving men, under the existing circumstances, from any positive religion whatever into…
If we strip ourselves of that part of Catholicism, we abjure Christianity.
The Catholics of Ireland (as I have said) have the whole of our positive religion: our difference is only a negation of certain tenets of theirs.
I have no doubt of the orthodox opinion of many, both of the clergy and laity, professing the established religion in Ireland, and of many even amongst the Dissenters, relative to the great points of the Christian faith: but that orthodoxy…
I am more concerned in what we agree than in what we differ.
This is the alliance which, under the appearance of hostility, we act as if we wished to promote.
You must submit your fasces to theirs, and at best be contented to follow with songs of gratulation, or invectives, according to your humor, the triumphal car of those great conquerors.
This will produce a very fatal kind of union amongst the people; but it is an union, which an unequal administration of justice tends necessarily to produce.
In that case, what is left for those who are abandoned by government, but to join with the persons who are capable of injuring them or protecting them as they oppose or concur in their designs?
The favorable or the hostile mind of the ruling power is of far more importance to mankind, for good or evil, than the black-letter of any statute.
But the most favorable laws can do very little towards the happiness of a people, when the disposition of the ruling power is adverse to them.
Little do many people in Ireland consider how much of its prosperity has been owing to, and still depends upon, its intimate connection with this kingdom.
By such a separation Ireland would be the most completely undone country in the world,--the most wretched, the most distracted, and, in the end, the most desolate part of the habitable globe.
I think, indeed, that Great Britain would be ruined by the separation of Ireland; but as there are degrees even in ruin, it would fall the most heavily on Ireland.
At bottom, Ireland has no other choice,--I mean, no other rational choice.
My poor opinion is, that the closest connection between Great Britain and Ireland is essential to the well-being, I had almost said, to the very being, of the two kingdoms.
Nothing is more discouraging to the loyalty of any description of men than to represent to them that their humiliation and subjection make a principal part in the fundamental and invariable policy which regards the conjunction of these two…
Politicians like Edmund Burke
