To look to the powers of the North.--It is not to the Danish ambassador, insolently treated in his own character and in ours, that we are to give proofs of the Regicide arrogance, and of our disposition to submit to it.
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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Our commerce must become vassal to her and dependent on her will.
Without such a naval force, France must become despotic mistress of that sea, and of all the countries whose shores it washes.
Is it to the Cispadane or to the Transpadane republics, which have been forced to bow under the galling yoke of French liberty, that we address all these pledges of our sincerity and love of peace with their unnatural parents?
Is it to him we are to prove our good faith in the peace which we are soliciting to receive from the hands of his and our robbers, the enemies of all arts, all sciences, all civilization, and all commerce?
The woods are wasted, the country is ravaged, property is confiscated, and the people are put to bear a double yoke, in the exactions of a tyrannical government and in the contributions of an hostile irruption.
It has been more than seen, it has been felt,--not only by those who have been the victims of their imperious rapacity, but, in a degree, by those very powers who have consented to establish this robbery, that they might be able to copy…
In what heart is it intended to kindle pity towards our multiplied mortifications and disgraces?
For whose use, entertainment, or instruction are all those overstrained and overlabored proceedings in council, in negotiation, and in speeches in Parliament intended?
It is an erect countenance, it is a firm adherence to principle, it is a power of resisting false shame and frivolous fear, that assert our good faith and honor, and assure to us the confidence of mankind.
They sometimes grow out of the necessities, always out of the habits, of slavish and degenerate spirits; and on the theatre of the world, it is not by assuming the mask of a Davus or a Geta that an actor will obtain credit for manly…
We know that there is a legal presumption against men, quando se nimis purgitant; and if a charge of ambition is not refuted by an affected humility, certainly the character of fraud and perfidy is still less to be washed away by…
Is every word in the declaration from Downing Street concerning their conduct, and concerning ours and that of our allies, so obviously false that it is necessary to give some new-invented proofs of our good faith in order to expunge the…
Whenever your enemy chooses to accuse you of perfidy and ill faith, will you put it into his power to throw you into the purgatory of self-humiliation?
The pride of no person in a flourishing condition is more justly to be dreaded than that of him who is mean and cringing under a doubtful and unprosperous fortune.
Well is it known that ambition can creep as well as soar.
If we have deserved this kind of evil fame from anything we have done in a state of prosperity, I am sure that it is not an abject conduct in adversity that can clear our reputation.
At what period of time was it that our country has deserved that load of infamy of which nothing but preternatural humiliation in language and conduct can serve to clear us?
I cannot help asking, Why all this pains to clear the British nation of ambition, perfidy, and the insatiate thirst of war?
They have no counterpart; and if they had, the enemy's conduct cancels such declarations,--and, I trust, along with them, cancels everything of mischief and dishonor that they contain.
We seem to have cut ourselves off from any benefit which an intermediate state of things might furnish to enable us totally to overturn that power, so little connected with moderation and justice.
If I am to understand the conclusion of the Declaration to be what unfortunately it seems to me, we make an engagement with the enemy, without any correspondent engagement on his side.
I hope I misunderstand this pledge,--or that we shall show no more regard to it than we have done to all the faith that we have plighted to vigor and resolution in our former Declaration.
He is to bring it forward at that time when it may best serve to establish his authority at home and to extend his power abroad, A dangerous assurance for this nation to give, whether it is broken or whether it is kept.
Nothing can be directed above the mark that we must aim at: everything below it is absolutely thrown away.
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