Whatever ill-humors are afloat in the state, they will be sure to discharge themselves in a mingled torrent in the Cloaca Maxima of Jacobinism.
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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Unless where Heaven has mingled uncommon ingredients of virtue in the composition,--quos meliore luto finxit præcordia Titan,--talents naturally gravitate to Jacobinism.
Whatever tends to irritate the talents of a country, which have at all times, and at these particularly, a mighty influence on the public mind, is of infinite service to that formidable cause.
Whatever tends to persuade the people that the few, called by whatever name you please, religious or political, are of opinion that their interest is not compatible with that of the many, is a great point gained to Jacobinism.
Whatever breeds discontent at this time will produce that great master-mischief most infallibly.
I think I can hardly overrate the malignity of the principles of Protestant ascendency, as they affect Ireland,--or of Indianism, as they affect these countries, and as they affect Asia,--or of Jacobinism, as they affect all Europe and the…
Though, perhaps, a want of success might be urged as a reason for making me doubt of the justice of the part I have taken, yet, until I have other lights than one side of the debate has furnished me, I must see things, and feel them too…
It is not the question of the places and seats, it is the real hostile disposition and the pretended fears, that leave stings in the minds of the people.
When any man tells this to Catholics, he insults their understandings, and he galls their feelings.
I have no difficulty in saying it was,--and as little in saying that the present concord of the citizens was worth buying, at a critical season, by granting a few capacities, which probably no one man now living is likely to be served or…
In the Catholic question I considered only one point: Was it, at the time, and in the circumstances, a measure which tended to promote the concord of the citizens?
What a sad thing it is, that the grand instructor, Time, has not yet been able to teach the grand lesson of his own value, and that, in every question of moral and political prudence, it is the choice of the moment which renders the…
Surely Great Britain and Ireland ought to join in wreathing a never-fading garland for the head of Grattan.
In fact, the exclusion of them seems to me only to mark jealousy and suspicion, and not to provide security in any way.--But I return to the old ground.
If I were to form a judgment from experience rather than theory, I should doubt much whether the capacity for or even the possession of a seat in Parliament did really convey much of power to be properly called political.
This is like to be effectual policy: I am sure it is honorable policy: and it is better to fail, if fail we must, in the paths of direct and manly than of low and crooked wisdom.
If they are kept such for any length of time, they will be made whole Jacobins.
You have now your choice, for full four fifths of your people, of the Catholic religion or Jacobinism.
Two hundred years dreadfully spent in experiments to force that people to change the form of their religion have proved fruitless.
Let them grow lax, skeptical, careless, and indifferent with regard to religion, and, so sure as we have an existence, it is not a zealous Anglican or Scottish Church principle, but direct Jacobinism, which will enter into that breach.
You know that the seduction of that part of mankind from the principles of religion, morality, subordination, and social order is the great object of the Jacobins.
I am the more serious on the positive encouragement to be given to this religion, (always, however, as secondary,) because the serious and earnest belief and practice of it by its professors forms, as things stand, the most effectual…
If this be my opinion as to the Catholic religion as a sect, you must see that I must be to the last degree averse to put a man, upon that account, upon a bad footing with relation to the privileges which the fundamental laws of this…
It is a great truth, and which in one of the debates I stated as strongly as I could to the House of Commons in the last session, that, if the Catholic religion is destroyed by the infidels, it is a most contemptible and absurd idea, that…
The Catholics are the far more numerous part of the Christians in your country; and how can Christianity (that is now the point in issue) be supported under the persecution, or even under the discountenance, of the greater number of…
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