Edmund Burke

All the struggle, all the dissension, arose afterwards, upon the preference of a despotic democracy to a government of reciprocal control.

I shall always, however, consider that liberty as very equivocal in her appearance, which has not wisdom and justice for her companions, and does not lead prosperity and plenty in her train.

But before the price of comfort and opulence is paid, one ought to be pretty sure it is real liberty which is purchased, and that she is to be purchased at no other price.

A brave people will certainly prefer liberty accompanied with a virtuous poverty to a depraved and wealthy servitude.

It is but cold, and no very flattering justice to that fallen monarchy, to say, that, for many years, it trespassed more by levity and want of judgment in several of its schemes than from any defect in diligence or in public spirit.

Rather too much countenance was given to the spirit of innovation, which soon was turned against those who fostered it, and ended in their ruin.

I must think such a government well deserved to have its excellences heightened, its faults corrected, and its capacities improved into a British Constitution.

Nor do I discern the character of a government that has been on the whole so oppressive, or so corrupt, or so negligent, as to be utterly unfit for all reformation.

Causes thus powerful to acquire and to retain cannot be found in discouraged industry, insecure property, and a positively destructive government.

The wealth of a country is another, and no contemptible standard, by which we may judge whether, on the whole, a government be protecting or destructive.

I never will suppose that fabric of a state to be the worst of all political institutions which by experience is found to contain a principle favorable (however latent it may be) to the increase of mankind.

No country in which population flourishes, and is in progressive improvement, can be under a very mischievous government.

Among the standards upon which the effects of government on any country are to be estimated, I must consider the state of its population as not the least certain.

In the interval between the instructions and the Revolution things changed their shape; and in consequence of that change, the true question at present is, whether those who would have reformed or those who have destroyed are in the right.

Men have been sometimes led by degrees, sometimes hurried, into things of which, if they could have seen the whole together, they never would have permitted the most remote approach.

But the question is not now of the vices of that monarchy, but of its existence.

These abuses accumulated in a length of time, as they must accumulate in every monarchy not under the constant inspection of a popular representative.

They will sort out the good from the evil, which is mixed in mortal institutions as it is in mortal men.

They will judge of human institutions as they do of human characters.

But steady, independent minds, when they have an object of so serious a concern to mankind as government under their contemplation, will disdain to assume the part of satirists and declaimers.

By a revolution in the state, the fawning sycophant of yesterday is converted into the austere critic of the present hour.

In such a popular persecution, individual sufferers are in a much more deplorable condition than in any other.

Not being wholly unread in the authors who had seen the most of those constitutions, and who best understood them, I cannot help concurring with their opinion, that an absolute democracy no more than absolute monarchy is to be reckoned…

I reprobate no form of government merely upon abstract principles.

It affects to be a pure democracy, though I think it in a direct train of becoming shortly a mischievous and ignoble oligarchy.