Its excellencies, when they come to be put to this sort of proof, may be found among its defects.
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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These are what no constitution can give: they are the gifts of God; and He alone knows whether we shall possess such gifts at the time we stand in need of them.
It is an obvious truth, that no constitution can defend itself: it must be defended by the wisdom and fortitude of men.
Next, we ought to know that the spirit of our laws, or that our own dispositions, which are stronger than laws, are susceptible of all those defensive measures which the occasion may require.
When we invite danger from a confidence in defensive measures, we ought, first of all, to be sure that it is a species of danger against which any defensive measures that can be adopted will be sufficient.
Above all, we cannot be too cautious in our communication with those who seek their happiness by other roads than those of humanity, morals, and religion, and whose liberty consists, and consists alone, in being free from those restraints…
But in all questions on the mode of procuring it for any particular community, we ought to be fearful of admitting those who have no interest in it, or who have, perhaps, an interest against it, into the consultation.
We cannot be too liberal in our general wishes for the happiness of our kind.
Our love of liberty and our love of our country were not distinct things.
To this time it has been English liberty, and English liberty only.
But, before this time, our liberty has never been corrupted.
At various periods we have had tyranny in this country, more than enough.
I go farther: it must keep alive some part of that fire of jealousy eternally and chastely burning, or it cannot be the British Constitution.
Our ruin will be disguised in profit, and the sale of a few wretched baubles will bribe a degenerate people to barter away the most precious jewel of their souls.
The same temper which brings us to solicit a Jacobin peace will induce us to temporize with all the evils of it.
Everything, when we let it proceed, will produce domestic distraction.
Everything done to prevent it will provoke a foreign war.
In effect, it is fundamentally contrary to a relation of amity, whose essence is a perfectly free communication.
But, after all, every such measure as an Alien Bill is a measure of hostility, a preparation for it, or a cause of dispute that shall bring it on.
The mischief is by far more visible than the remedy.
A French ambassador, at the head of a French party, is an evil which we have never experienced.
In France he is out of the reach of your police; and when he returns to England, one such English emissary is worse than a legion of French, who are either tongue-tied, or whose speech betrays them.
We expel suspected foreigners from hence; and we suffer every Englishman to pass over into France to be initiated in all the infernal discipline of the place, to cabal and to be corrupted by every means of cabal and of corruption, and then…
Who does not see the utter insufficiency of such a remedy, if such a remedy could be at all adopted?
In conversation I have not yet found nor heard of any persons, except those who undertake to instruct the public, so unconscious of the actual state of things, or so little prescient of the future, who do not shudder all over and feel a…
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