Well might we call for a recompense in America for those services to which Europe owed its safety.
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 war would have had system, correspondence, and a certain direction.
Had we brought the main of our force to bear upon that quarter, all the operations of the British and Imperial crowns would have been combined.
On the plan of a war in France, every advantage that our allies might obtain would be doubled in its effect.
We are probably the only nation who have declined to act against an enemy when it might have been done in his own country, and who, having an armed, a powerful, and a long victorious ally in that country, declined all effectual…
Warring there, we should have led our arms to the capital of Wrong.
This ally, (or rather, this principal in the war,) by the confession of the Regicide himself, was more formidable to him than all his other foes united.
Had we carried on the war on the side of France which looks towards the Channel or the Atlantic, we should have attacked our enemy on his weak and unarmed side.
Every advantage is but a new demand on England for recruits to the West Indian grave.
There the European conqueror finds a cruel defeat in the very fruits of his success.
In carrying on the war in the West Indies, the hostile sword is merciful, the country in which we engage is the dreadful enemy.
In these adventures it was not an enemy we had to vanquish, but a cemetery to conquer.
It would not be at all difficult to prove that an army of an hundred thousand men, horse, foot, and artillery, might have been employed against the enemy, on the very soil which he has usurped, at a far less expense than has been…
We shall reflect that our plan was good neither for offence nor defence.
We shall have the satisfaction of knowing that no blood or treasure has been spared by the Allies for support of the Regicide system.
In truth, it appears to me, that, when we come to balance our account, we shall find in the proposed peace only the pure, simple, and unendowed charms of Jacobin amity.
In that case, resentment, faction, and even necessity, will throw her more and more into the power of the new, mischievous Republic.
She loses so much carrying trade, and that means of keeping up the small degree of naval power she holds: for which policy alone, and not for any commercial gain, she maintains the Cape, or any settlement beyond it.
If we return the African and the Asiatic conquests, we put them into the hands of a nominal state (to that Holland is reduced) unable to retain them, and which will virtually leave them under the direction of France.
It is evident, that, if we can keep our Eastern conquests, we keep them not at the expense of France, but at the expense of Holland, our ally,--of Holland, the immediate cause of the war, the nation whom we had undertaken to protect, and…
But giving, as I freely give, every possible credit to these Eastern conquests, I ask one question:--On whom are they made?
If we treat in the present situation of things, we have nothing in our hands that can redeem Europe.
In that case we are thus situated: either we must give Europe, bound hand and foot, to France, or we must quit the West Indies without any one object, great or small, towards indemnity and security.
Will the Allies, then, give away their ancient patrimony, that England may keep islands in the West Indies?
In effect and substance, her crown is a fief of Regicide.
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