I do not know how gentlemen of Ireland reconcile such an idea to their own liberties, or to the natural use and enjoyment of their estates.
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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The matter is absurd and ridiculous, and, while ever the idea of mutual marriages, inheritances, purchases, and privileges subsist, can never be carried into execution with common sense or common justice.
Is there any sense or any justice in it, unless you affirm that there should be no such intermarriage and no such mutual inheritance between the natives?
Is it right that a woman who marries into Ireland, and perhaps well purchases her jointure or her dower there, should not after her husband's death have it in her choice to return to her country and her friends without being taxed for it?
This law seems, therefore, to me to go directly against the fundamental points of the legislative and judicial constitution of these kingdoms, and against the happy communion of their privileges.
If in Ireland we lay it down as a maxim, that a residence in Great Britain is a political evil, and to be discouraged by penal taxes, you must necessarily reject all the privileges and benefits which are connected with such a residence.
You will not be pleased with a law which by its operation tends to disqualify you from a seat in this Parliament; and if your own virtue or fortune, or if that of your children, should carry you or them to it, should you like to be…
Do you, or does any Irish gentleman, think it a mean privilege, that, the moment he sets his foot upon this ground, he is to all intents and purposes an Englishman?
Is not such an Irish tax as is now proposed a virtual declaration that England is a foreign country, and a renunciation on your part of the principle of common naturalization, which runs through this whole empire?
What is taxing the resort to and residence in any place, but declaring that your connection with that place is a grievance?
To what end is the ultimate appeal in judicature lodged in this kingdom, if men may be disabled from following their suits here, and may be taxed into an absolute denied of justice?
If all this be admitted, then without question this country must have the sole right to the imperial legislation: by which I mean that law which regulates the polity and economy of the several parts, as they relate to one another and to…
So that I look upon the residence of the supreme power to be settled here: not by force, or tyranny, or even by mere long usage, but by the very nature of things, and the joint consent of the whole body.
But if it be true that the several bodies which make up this complicated mass are to be preserved as one empire, an authority sufficient to preserve that unity, and by its equal weight and pressure to consolidate the various parts that…
The objections to it are very glaring, and must strike the eyes of all those who have not their reasons for shutting them against evident truth.
We shall be barbarized on both sides of the water, if we do not see one another now and then.
One of the most odious parts of the proposed Absentee Tax is its tendency to separate friends, and to make as ugly breaches in private society as it must make in the unity of the great political body.
The debt which your Imperial Majesty's august predecessors have contracted to the ancient manners of Europe, by means of which they civilized a vast empire, will be nobly repaid by preserving those manners from the hideous change with…
Madam, your glory will be complete, if, after having given peace to Europe by your moderation, you shall bestow stability on all its governments by your vigor and decision.
From your wisdom other states will learn that they who wait until all the powers of Europe are at once in motion can never move at all.
The constancy of the oppressed will be broken; the power of tyrants will be confirmed.
We individuals, mere spectators of the scene, but who sock our liberties under the shade of legal authority, and of course sympathize with the sufferers in that cause, never can permit ourselves to believe that such an event can disgrace…
Madam, it is dangerous to praise any human virtue before the accomplishment of the tasks which it imposes on itself.
These enemies of sovereigns, if at all acknowledged, must be acknowledged on account of that enmity alone: they have nothing else to recommend them.
The honor of a nation cannot be represented by an assembly which disgraces and degrades it: at Coblentz only the king and the nation of France are to be found.
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