I undertook it, however; and I succeeded in my undertaking.
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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As to any noble use, I trust I know how to employ as well as he a much greater fortune than he possesses.
It cannot be a reward for what mere animal life must, indeed, sustain, but never can inspire.
Between money and such services, if done by abler men than I am, there is no common principle of comparison: they are quantities incommensurable.
I answer, that my exertions, whatever they have been, were such as no hopes of pecuniary reward could possibly excite; and no pecuniary compensation can possibly reward them.
I have no doubt of his Grace's readiness in all the calculations of vulgar arithmetic; but I shrewdly suspect that he is little studied in the theory of moral proportions, and has never learned the rule of three in the arithmetic of policy…
Poor rich man! he can hardly know anything of public industry in its exertions, or can estimate its compensations when its work is done.
Whatever his natural parts may be, I cannot recognize in his few and idle years the competence to judge of my long and laborious life.
I challenge the Duke of Bedford as a juror to pass upon the value of my services.
I claim, not the letter, but the spirit of the old English law,--that is, to be tried by my peers.
Making this protestation, I refuse all revolutionary tribunals, where men have been put to death for no other reason than that they had obtained favors from the crown.
Whatever it may be in the eyes of these noble persons themselves, to me their situation calls for the most profound respect.
Even in the utmost latitude of defensive liberty, I wish to preserve all possible decorum.
For whatever I have been (I am now no more) I put myself on my country.
It is a demand of justice; it is a demonstration of gratitude.
To assert myself thus traduced is not vanity or arrogance.
But they derive an importance from the rank of the persons they come from, and the gravity of the place where they were uttered.
If I happened to be now and then in the wrong, (as who is not?) like all other men, I must bear the consequence of my faults and my mistakes.
I knew, that, as long as I remained in public, I should live down the calumnies of malice and the judgments of ignorance.
It would as ill become me, thus called upon, to depreciate the value of a long life spent with unexampled toil in the service of my country.
What I have obtained was the fruit of no bargain, the production of no intrigue, the result of no compromise, the effect of no solicitation.
Their turpitude purveys to their malice; and they unplumb the dead for bullets to assassinate the living.
They have so determined a hatred to all privileged orders, that they deny even to the departed the sad immunities of the grave.
Neither sex, nor age, nor the sanctuary of the tomb, is sacred to them.
They pursue even such as me into the obscurest retreats, and haul them before their revolutionary tribunals.
Politicians like Edmund Burke
