But the throats of the rich ought not to be cut, nor their magazines plundered; because, in their persons, they are trustees for those who labor, and their hoards are the banking-houses of these latter.
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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That class of dependent pensioners called the rich is so extremely small, that, if all their throats were cut, and a distribution made of all they consume in a year, it would not give a bit of bread and cheese for one night's supper to…
They are under an absolute, hereditary, and indefeasible dependence on those who labor and are miscalled the poor.
It is not only so of the state and statesman, but of all the classes and descriptions of the rich: they are the pensioners of the poor, and are maintained by their superfluity.
It is in the power of government to prevent much evil; it can do very little positive good in this, or perhaps in anything else.
The people maintain them, and not they the people.
In that state of affairs, and of the public with relation to them, the first thing that government owes to us, the people, is information; the next is timely coercion: the one to guide our judgment; the other to regulate our tempers.
The number of idle tales spread about by the industry of faction and by the zeal of foolish good-intention, and greedily devoured by the malignant credulity of mankind, tends infinitely to aggravate prejudices which in themselves are more…
The great use of government is as a restraint; and there is no restraint which it ought to put upon others, and upon itself too, rather than that which is imposed on the fury of speculating under circumstances of irritation.
Remember, too, that mistaken or misapplied virtues, if they are not as pernicious as vice, frustrate at least their own natural tendencies, and disappoint the purposes of the Great Giver.
Remember him, my friend, who in the highest degree honored and respected you; and remember that great parts are a great trust.
Oh! this modesty, in time and place, is a charming virtue, and the grace of all other virtues.
You are young; you have great talents; you have a clear head; you have a natural, fluent, and unforced elocution; your ideas are just, your sentiments benevolent, open, and enlarged;--but this is too big for your modesty.
People talk of war or cry for peace: have they to the bottom considered the questions either of war or peace, upon the scale of the existing world?
I well know that everything of the daring kind which I speak of is critical: but the times are critical.
Not meaning to depreciate the minority in Parliament, whose talents are also great, and to whom I do not deny virtues, their system seems to me to be fundamentally wrong.
I think that our ministry (though there are things against them which neither you nor I can dissemble, and which grieve me to the heart) is by far the most honest and by far the wisest system of administration in Europe.
The great must submit to the dominion of prudence and of virtue, or none will long submit to the dominion of the great.
These they would have paramount to all constitutions; they would not suffer monarchs, or senates, or popular assemblies, under pretences of dignity or authority or freedom, to shake off those moral riders which reason has appointed to…
Such a republican spirit we perhaps fondly conceive to have animated the distinguished heroes and patriots of old, who knew no mode of policy but religion and virtue.
It would reform, not by destroying, but by saving, the great, the rich, and the powerful.
This republican spirit would not suffer men in high place to bring ruin on their country and on themselves.
By this, which I call the true republican spirit, paradoxical as it may appear, monarchies alone can be rescued from the imbecility of courts and the madness of the crowd.
I would wish to call the impulses of individuals at once to the aid and to the control of authority.
I would add my voice with better, and, I trust, more potent charms, to draw down justice and wisdom and fortitude from heaven, for the correction of human vice, and the recalling of human error from the devious ways into which it has been…
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