Dangers by being despised grow great; so they do by absurd provision against them.
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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Otherwise we should dispute all the points of morality, before we can punish a murderer, robber, and adulterer; we should analyze all society.
We must assume the rights of what represents the public to control the individual, to make his will and his acts to submit to their will, until some intolerable grievance shall make us know that it does not answer its end, and will submit…
If they should find the State stick to the Church, the question is, whether they love the constitution in State so well as that they would not destroy the constitution of the State in order to destroy that of the Church.
A mean and unworthy jealousy it would be to do anything upon, the mere speculative apprehension of what men will do.
For this, though it may possibly be good logic, cannot by any possibility whatsoever be a fair or charitable representation of any man or any set of men.
If even, when embodied into congregations, they limited their principle to their own congregations, and were satisfied themselves to abstain from what they thought unlawful, it would be cruel, in my opinion, to molest them in that tenet…
But when religion is embodied into faction, and factions have objects to pursue, it will and must, more or less, become a question of power between them.
If religion only related to the individual, and was a question between God and the conscience, it would not be wise, nor in my opinion equitable, for human authority to step in.
This faction (the authors of the petition) are not confined to a theological sect, but are also a political faction. 1st, As theological, we are to show that they do not aim at the quiet enjoyment of their own liberty, but are associated…
We are to see whether there be any and what mixture of political dogmas and political practices with their religious tenets, of what nature they are, and how far they are at present practically separable from them.
Therefore, when men come before us, and rise up like an exhalation from the ground, they come in a questionable shape, and we must exorcise them, and try whether their intents be wicked or charitable, whether they bring airs from heaven or…
But when a now fire bursts out, a face of desolations comes on, not to be rectified in ages.
Old religious factions are volcanoes burnt out; on the lava and ashes and squalid scoriæ of old eruptions grow the peaceful olive, the cheering vine, and the sustaining corn.
You have done this, because you never have laid it down as an universal proposition, as a maxim, that nothing relative to religion was your concern, but the direct contrary; and therefore you have always examined whether there was a…
The first question a good statesman would ask himself, therefore, would be, How and in what circumstances do you find the society? and to act upon them.
The object of the state is (as far as may be) the happiness of the whole.
All policy is very suspicious that sacrifices any part to the ideal good of the whole.
All things founded on the idea of danger ought in a great degree to be temporary.
It is the interest, and it is the duty, and because it is the interest and the duty, it is the right of government to attend much to opinions; because, as opinions soon combine with passions, even when they do not produce them, they have…
Above all, he ought strictly to look to it, when men begin to form new combinations, to be distinguished by new names, and especially when they mingle a political system with their religious opinions, true or false, plausible or…
As religion is one of the bonds of society, he ought not to suffer it to be made the pretext of destroying its peace, order, liberty, and its security.
The magistrate, who is a man, and charged with the concerns of men, and to whom very specially nothing human is remote and indifferent, has a right and a duty to watch over it with an unceasing vigilance, to protect, to promote, to forward…
No wise man, on the contrary, would tyrannically set up his own sense so as to reprobate that of the great prevailing body of the community, and pay no regard to the established opinions and prejudices of mankind, or refuse to them the…
No conscientious man would willingly establish what he knew to be false and mischievous in religion, or in anything else.
Politicians like Edmund Burke
