Nothing is so rash as fear; and the counsels of pusillanimity very rarely put off, whilst they are always sure to aggravate, the evils from which they would fly.
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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It is never to be entered into without a mature deliberation,--not a deliberation lengthened out into a perplexing indecision, but a deliberation leading to a sure and fixed judgment.
We ought with reverence to approach that tremendous divinity, that loves courage, but commands counsel.
All the art of Greece and all the pride and power of Eastern monarchs never heaped upon their ashes so grand a monument.
It is made, if ever war was made, to touch all the great springs of action in the human breast.
To qualify us for that preëminence, we had then an high mind and a constancy unconquerable; we were then inspired with no flashy passions, but such as were durable as well as warm, such as corresponded to the great interests we had at…
It has been done to show that the British nation was then a great people,--to point out how and by what means they came to be exalted above the vulgar level, and to take that lead which they assumed among mankind.
That heartless and dispirited people, whom Lord Somers had represented about two years before as dead in energy and operation, continued that war, to which it was supposed they were unequal in mind and in means, for near thirteen years.
Under the British union, the union of Europe was consolidated; and it long held together with a degree of cohesion, firmness, and fidelity not known before or since in any political combination of that extent.
In spite of the ministers, who staggered under the weight that his mind imposed upon theirs, unsupported as they felt themselves by the popular spirit, he infused into them his own soul, he renewed in them their ancient heart, he rallied…
In spite of his people, he resolved to make them great and glorious,--to make England, inclined to shrink into her narrow self, the arbitress of Europe, the tutelary angel of the human race.
He persevered to expel the fears of his people by his fortitude, to steady their fickleness by his constancy, to expand their narrow prudence by his enlarged wisdom, to sink their factious temper in his public spirit.
They did not so much as advise the king to listen to the propositions of the enemy, nor to seek for peace, but through the mediation of a vigorous war.
No sighing or panting after negotiation; no motions from the opposition to force the ministry into a peace; no messages from ministers to palsy and deaden the resolution of Parliament or the spirit of the nation.
They are now in almost every market-town: and this circumstance (whether the thing be carried to an excess or not) demonstrates the astonishing increase of private confidence, of general circulation, and of internal commerce,--an increase…
Public credit, that great, but ambiguous principle, which has so often been predicted as the cause of our certain ruin, but which for a century has been the constant companion, and often the means, of our prosperity and greatness, had its…
Ireland, now so large a source of the common opulence and power, and which, wisely managed, might be made much more beneficial and much more effective, was then the heaviest of the burdens.
It is for us at present to recollect what we have been, and to consider what, if we please, we may be still.
We shall find that in all that period of twenty-four years there were hardly five that could be called a season of peace; and the interval between the two wars was in reality nothing more than a very active preparation for renovated…
I speak it emphatically, and with a desire that it should be marked,--in a long war; because, without such a war, no experience has yet told us that a dangerous power has ever been reduced to measure or to reason.
They spoke neither to the understanding nor to the heart.
Accordingly, all the arguments against a compliance with what was represented as the popular desire (urged on with all possible vehemence and earnestness by the Jacobins) have appeared flat and languid, feeble and evasive.
But nothing has been done to make us feel in what manner the safety of that government is connected with the principle and with the issue of this war.
To prevent the mischievous doctrines of the latter from corrupting our minds, matter and argument have been supplied abundantly, and even to surfeit, on the excellency of our own government.
The merits of the war with the former have been argued solely on political grounds.
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