Nay, we are apt to urge our dislike of such measures as a reason for imitating them,--and, by an almost incredible absurdity, because some powers have destroyed their country by their persecuting spirit, to argue, that we ought to…
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.
gutenberg.org
Every instance of fury and bigotry in other men, one should think, would naturally fill us with an horror of that disposition.
For my part, there is no circumstance, in all the contradictions of our most mysterious nature, that appears to be more humiliating than the use we are disposed to make of those sad examples which seem purposely marked for our correction…
To commiserate the distresses of all men suffering innocently, perhaps meritoriously, is generous, and very agreeable to the better part of our nature,--a disposition that ought by all means to be cherished.
But I flatter myself that not a few will be found who do not think that the names of Protestant and Papist can make any change in the nature of essential justice.
If it were enough, by the use of an odious and unpopular word, to determine the question, it would be no longer a subject of rational disquisition; since that very prejudice which gives these odious names, and which is the party charged…
What other name can be given to a country which contains so many hundred thousands of human creatures reduced to a state of the most abject servitude?
The privileges which the Protestants of that kingdom enjoyed antecedent to this revocation were far greater than the Roman Catholics of Ireland ever aspired to under a contrary establishment.
But, after all, is it not most evident that this act of injustice, which let loose on that monarch such a torrent of invective and reproach, and which threw so dark a cloud over all the splendor of a most illustrious reign, falls far short…
Louis the Fourteenth confessed, by this sort of apology, that, if the number had been large, the revocation had been unjust.
If this were the fact, (as it was undoubtedly,) no argument of policy could have been strong enough to excuse a measure by which eight hundred thousand men were despoiled, at one stroke, of so many of their rights and privileges.
It was too glaring a contradiction even to those principles upon which persecution itself is supported.
But the persecution of so vast a body of men as the Huguenots was too strong a measure even for the law of pride and power.
Seldom is the title or preamble of the law of the same import with the body and enacting part; but they generally place some other color uppermost, which differs from that which is afterwards to appear, or at least one that is several…
The clandestine manner in which those in power carry on such designs is a sufficient argument of the sense they inwardly entertain of the true nature of their proceedings.
It cannot be dissembled that this is not at all remote from the case before us, where the great body of the people are excluded from all valuable property,--where the greatest and most ordinary benefits of society are conferred as…
Take them in the most favorable light, every exception from the original and fixed rule of equality and justice ought surely to be very well authorized in the reason of their deviation, and very rare in their use.
Men want to be reminded, who do not want to be taught; because those original ideas of rectitude, to which the mind is compelled to assent when they are proposed, are not always as present to it as they ought to be.
Reason is never inconvenient, but when it comes to be applied.
I cannot see a glimmering of distinction to evade it; nor is it possible to allege any reason for the proscription of so large a part of the kingdom, which would not hold equally to support, under parallel circumstances, the proscription…
On any other scheme, I defy any man living to settle a correct standard which may discriminate between equitable rule and the most direct tyranny.
Neither the merits nor the ill deserts, neither the wealth and importance nor the indigence and obscurity, of the one part or of the other, can make any alteration in this fundamental truth.
We must at once make a total change in all our ideas, and look for a new definition of law.
If this principle be denied or evaded, what ground have we left to reason on?
If any proposition can be clear in itself, it is this: that a law which shuts out from all secure and valuable property the bulk of the people cannot be made for the utility of the party so excluded.
Politicians like Edmund Burke
