Edmund Burke

Now what does this go to, but to lead directly to anarchy?

The great object of most of these reformers is, to prepare the destruction of the Constitution, by disgracing and discrediting the House of Commons.

I know there is an order that keeps things fast in their place: it is made to us, and we are made to it.

I have that inward and dignified consciousness of my own security and independence, which constitutes, and is the only thing which, does constitute, the proud and comfortable sentiment of freedom in the human breast.

I know that no power on earth, acting as I ought to do, can touch my life, my liberty, or my property.

In that Constitution, I know, and exultingly I feel, both that I am free, and that I am not free dangerously to myself or to others.

Not in their fancies, nor in my own: I will seek for it where I know it is to be found,--in the Constitution I actually enjoy.

Then our liberties are in their pleasure; it depends on their arbitrary will how far I shall be free.

You admit that there is an extreme in liberty, which may be infinitely noxious to those who are to receive it, and which in the end will leave them no liberty at all.

Why all this limitation in giving blessings and benefits to mankind?

What is the cause of this parsimony of the liberty which you dole out to the people?

In every political proposal we must not leave out of the question the political views and object of the proposer; and these we discover, not by what he says, but by the principles he lays down.

Now, I ask, what advantage do you find that the places which abound in representation possess over others in which it is more scanty, in security for freedom, in security for justice, or in any one of those means of procuring temporal…

But can you fairly and distinctly point out what one evil or grievance has happened which you can refer to the representative not following the opinion of his constituents?

And I will not take their promise rather than the performance of the Constitution.

If without, as in case of the fabrication of a new commonwealth, I will hear the learned arguing what promises to be expedient; but if we are to judge of a commonwealth actually existing, the first thing I inquire is, What has been found…

If you reject personal representation, you are pushed upon expedience; and, then what they wish us to do is, to prefer their speculations on that subject to the happy experience of this country, of a growing liberty and a growing…

The more frequently this affair is discussed, the stronger the case appears to the sense and the feelings of mankind.

This is the true touchstone of all theories which regard man and the affairs of men,--Does it suit his nature in general?--does it suit his nature as modified by his habits?

No,--whenever I speak against theory, I mean always a weak, erroneous, fallacious, unfounded, or imperfect theory; and one of the ways of discovering that it is a false theory is by comparing it with practice.

It seems to me a preposterous way of reasoning, and a perfect confusion of ideas, to take the theories which learned and speculative men have made from that government, and then, supposing it made on those theories which were made from it…

In all moral machinery, the moral results are its test.

To those who say it is a bad one, I answer, Look to its effects.

It is true that to say your Constitution is what it has been is no sufficient defence for those who say it is a bad constitution.

To ask whether a thing which has always been the same stands to its usual principle seems to me to be perfectly absurd: for how do you know the principles, but from the construction? and if that remains the same, the principles remain the…