Depend upon it, they must all be supported, or they must all fall in the crash of a common ruin.
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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Somebody has said, that a king may make a nobleman, but he cannot make a gentleman.
If anything is, one more than another, out of the power of man, it is to create a prejudice.
I think we may dispute, rail, persecute, and provoke the Catholics out of their prejudices; but it is not in ours they will take refuge.
The divisions which formerly prevailed in the Church, with all their overdone zeal, only purified and ventilated our common faith, because there was no common enemy arrayed and embattled to take advantage of their dissensions; but now…
What, then, is left to a real Christian, (Christian as a believer and as a statesman,) but to make a league between all the grand divisions of that name, to protect and to cherish them all, and by no means to proscribe in any manner, more…
As the grand prejudice, and that which holds all the other prejudices together, the first, last, and middle object of their hostility is religion.
This I take to be a fair description of the principles and leading maxims of the enlightened of our day who are commonly called Jacobins.
To obtain an army for this purpose, they everywhere engage the poor by holding out to them as a bribe the spoils of the rich.
For this purpose the Jacobins have resolved to destroy the whole frame and fabric of the old societies of the world, and to regenerate them after their fashion.
It is an attempt (hitherto but too successful) to eradicate prejudice out of the minds of men, for the purpose of putting all power and authority into the hands of the persons capable of occasionally enlightening the minds of the people.
My whole politics, at present, centre in one point, and to this the merit or demerit of every measure (with me) is referable,--that is, what will most promote or depress the cause of Jacobinism.
I do not choose to direct all my precautions to the part where the danger does not press, and to leave myself open and unguarded where I am not only really, but visibly attacked.
As long as men hold charity and justice to be essential integral parts of religion, there can be little danger from a strong attachment to particular tenets in faith.
Nothing is so fatal to religion as indifference, which is, at least, half infidelity.
I shall never call any religious opinions, which appear important to serious and pious minds, things of no consideration.
You need make no apology for your attachment to the religious description you belong to.
Perhaps it would be full as dangerous to have the people under the conduct of factious pastors of their own as under a foreign ecclesiastical court.
But there may be danger of wishing a change, even where no religious motive can operate; and every enemy to such a state comes as a friend to the subject; and where other countries are under terror, they begin to hope.
This is enough to irritate even those who have not a spark of bigotry in their constitution to the most desperate enterprises; it certainly will inflame, darken, and render more dangerous the spirit of bigotry in those who are possessed by…
But, secondly, if anything can tend to revive and keep it up, it is to keep alive the passions of men by ill usage.
And if such a spirit has been at any time roused in a society, after it has had its paroxysm it commonly subsides and is quiet, and is even the weaker for the violence of its first exertion: security and ease are its mortal enemies.
The principle of religion is seldom lasting; the majority of men are in no persuasion bigots; they are not willing to sacrifice, on every vain imagination that superstition or enthusiasm holds forth, or that even zeal and piety recommend…
But, for my part, I think the real danger to every state is, to render its subjects justly discontented; nor is there in polities or science any more effectual secret for their security than to establish in their people a firm opinion that…
If it can be shown that the great rebellions of Ireland have arisen from attempts to reduce the natives to the state to which they are now reduced, it will show that an attempt to continue them in that state will rather be disadvantageous…
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