For mercy, as we conceive, consists, not in the weakness of the means, but in the benignity of the ends.
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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This mode of proceeding, by harsh laws and feeble armies, could not be defended on the principle of mercy and forbearance.
Recourse, indeed, was at the same time had to force; and we saw a force sent out, enough to menace liberty, but not to awe opposition,--tending to bring odium on the civil power, and contempt on the military,--at once to provoke and…
It seemed to us absurd and preposterous to hold out, as the means of calming a people in a state of extreme inflammation, and ready to take up arms, the austere law which a rigid conqueror would impose as the sequel of the most decisive…
We could not conceive, when disorders had arisen from the complaint of one violated right, that to violate every other was the proper means of quieting an exasperated people.
We looked upon them to be, what they have since proved to be, the cause of inflaming discontent into disobedience, and resistance into revolt.
When no means of power to awe or to oblige are possessed, the strongest ties which connect mankind in every relation, social and civil, and which teach them mutually to respect each other, are broken.
What, in those circumstances, can save him from the last extremes of indignity and oppression, but something left in his own hands which may enable him to conciliate the favor and control the excesses of government?
Abuses of subordinate authority increase, and all means of redress lessen, as the distance of the subject removes him from the seat of the supreme power.
But permit us to lay at your Majesty's feet our deliberate judgment on the real merits of that principle, the violation of which is the known ground and origin of these troubles.
Much power is tolerated, and passes unquestioned, where much is yielded to opinion.
It is not consistent with equity or wisdom to set at defiance the general feelings of great communities, and of all the orders which compose them.
We have been too early instructed, and too long habituated to believe, that the only firm seat of all authority is in the minds, affections, and interests of the people, to change our opinions on the theoretic reasonings of speculative…
The sense of a whole people, most gracious sovereign, never ought to be contemned by wise and beneficent rulers,--whatever may be the abstract claims, or even rights, of the supreme power.
This scheme, being, therefore, set up in direct opposition to the rooted and confirmed sentiments and habits of thinking of an whole people, has produced the effects which ever must result from such a collision of power and opinion.
Knowing the inestimable value of peace, and the contemptible value of what was sought by war, we wished to compose the distractions of our country, not by the use of foreign arms, but by prudent regulations in our own domestic policy.
But we had an horror of becoming the instruments in a design, of which, in our turn, we might become the victims.
Experience had but too fully instructed us in the possibility of the reduction of a free people to slavery by foreign mercenary armies.
We lament them from an experience of their mischief, as we originally opposed them from a sure foresight of their unhappy and inevitable tendency.
We trust, therefore, that we shall stand justified in offering to our sovereign and the public our reasons for persevering inflexibly in our uniform dissent from every part of those measures.
We know that it is our ordinary duty to submit ourselves to the determinations of the majority in everything, except what regards the just defence of our honor and reputation.
Our scheme ought to be such as to have in it a succession of measures: else it is impossible to secure anything like a regular attendance; opposition will otherwise always carry a disreputable air; neither will it be possible, without that…
It is more reputable, and certainly it is more safe too, that it should be grounded on the evident necessity of encountering the dangers which you foresee.
It is not becoming that your boldness should arise from a want of foresight.
At any rate, I am sure it is right, if we take this step, to take it with a full view of the consequences, and with minds and measures in a state of preparation to meet them.
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