They think us to be not only without virtue, but without shame.
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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Our judgments stink in the nostrils of the people.
In our legislative capacity, we are, in most instances, esteemed a very wise body; in our judicial, we have no credit, no character at all.
Our public wounds cannot be concealed; to be cured, they must be laid open.
Secondly, because the House of Commons, as it is the most powerful, is the most corruptible part of the whole Constitution.
First, because the greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.
But the very difficulty argues and enforces the necessity of it.
The substance of the question is, to put bounds to your own power by the rules and principles of law.
But our situation is not in our own choice: our conduct in that situation is all that is in our own option.
I could wish, indeed, that they who advise the crown had not left Parliament in this very ungraceful distress, in which they can neither retract with dignity nor persist with justice.
The question amounts to this: Whether you mean to be a legal tribunal, or an arbitrary and despotic assembly?
If abroad the people are deceived by popular, within we are deluded by ministerial cant.
Under a pretence of exalting the dignity, they undermine the very foundations of this House.
They are the mortal enemies of the House of Commons who would persuade them to think or to act as if they were a self-originated magistracy, independent of the people, and unconnected with their opinions and feelings.
Their right is prior to ours: we all originate there.
They have the right of electing; you have a right of expelling: they of choosing; you of judging, and only of judging, of the choice.
That the people should not choose their own representative is a saying that shakes the Constitution: that this House should name the representative is a saying which, followed by practice, subverts the Constitution.
If you do, you had much better do it now in temper, in a grave, moderate, and parliamentary way.
If this be the utmost of their meaning, you must first consider whether you wish your Church Establishment to be destroyed.
Which of them has told you that this would not be the first and favorite use of any power they should get?
Which of them has ever told you that they do not mean to destroy the Church, if ever it should be in their power?
The war is with the Establishment itself,--no quarter, no compromise.
It is not because ungrounded alarms have been given that there never can exist a real danger: perhaps the worst effect of an ungrounded alarm is to make people insensible to the approach of a real peril.
If you have reason to think thus of it, take the reformation instantly into your own hands, whilst you are yet cool, and can do it in measure and proportion, and not under the influence of election tests and popular fury.
But if I know that the sword desired is to be employed to cut my own throat, common sense, and my own self-defence, dictate to me to keep out of his hands this natural right of the sword.
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