Every little measure is a great error, and every great error will bring on no small ruin.
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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If ever there was a time that calls on us for no vulgar conception of things, and for exertions in no vulgar strain, it is the awful hour that Providence has now appointed to this nation.
It often accompanies, and actuates, and is even auxiliary to a powerful understanding; and when they both conspire and act harmoniously, their force is great to destroy disorder within and to repel injury from abroad.
Strong passion under the direction of a feeble reason feeds a low fever, which serves only to destroy the body that entertains it.
Indeed, it is when a great nation is in great difficulties that minds must exalt themselves to the occasion, or all is lost.
Nature is never more truly herself than in her grandest forms.
Never, no, never, did Nature say one thing and Wisdom say another.
Never was there a jar or discord between genuine sentiment and sound policy.
If he found his situation full of danger, (and I do not deny that it is perilous in the extreme,) he must feel that it is also full of glory, and that he is placed on a stage than which no muse of fire that had ascended the highest heaven…
Opinions, as they sometimes follow, so they frequently guide and direct the affections; and men may become more attached to the country of their principles than to the country of their birth.
But for my part, I have never heard the gross facts on which I ground my idea of their marked partiality to the reigning tyranny in France in any part denied.
There he lies, unpitied by the grand philanthropy, to meditate upon the fate of those who are faithful to their king and country.
Our sympathy is always more forcibly attracted towards the misfortunes of certain persons, and in certain descriptions: and this sympathetic attraction discovers, beyond a possibility of mistake, our mental affinities and elective…
Men are rarely without some sympathy in the sufferings of others; but in the immense and diversified mass of human misery, which may be pitied, but cannot be relieved, in the gross, the mind must make a choice.
A leaning there must ever be, and it is of the first importance to any nation to observe to what side that leaning inclines,--whether to our own community, or to one with which it is in a state of hostility.
All would have been a golden age, full of peace, order, and liberty,--and philosophy, raying out from Europe, would have warmed and enlightened the universe; but, unluckily, irritable philosophy, the most irritable of all things, was pat…
Had we cherished her from the beginning, and felt for her when attacked, she, poor, good soul, would never have invaded any foreign nation, never murdered her sovereign and his family, never proscribed, never exiled, never imprisoned…
It is fit that France should have both Holland and the Austrian Netherlands too, as a barrier to her against the attacks of despotism.
On this new system of optimism, it is so much the better: so much the further are we removed from the contact with infectious despotism.
By her conquests she only enlarged the sphere of her beneficence, she only extended the blessings of liberty to so many more foolishly reluctant nations.
From that moment England and France were become natural allies, and all the other states natural enemies.
We ought to have acted under her auspices, in extending her salutary influence upon every side.
All other nations we ought to have commanded not to trouble her sacred throes, whilst in labor to bring into an happy birth her abundant litter of constitutions.
We ought to have cultivated France, and France alone, from the moment of her Revolution.
The whole college of the states of Europe is no better than a gang of tyrants.
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