Very few, for instance, could have imagined that property, which has been taken for natural dominion, should, through the whole of a vast kingdom, lose all its importance, and even its influence.
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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But so far as regards political matter, the human mind and human affairs are susceptible of infinite modifications, and of combinations wholly new and unlooked-for.
There are some fundamental points in which Nature never changes; but they are few and obvious, and belong rather to morals than to politics.
Whereas, if a man with reasonable good parts and natural sagacity, and not in the leading-strings of any master, will look steadily on the business before him, without being diverted by retrospect and comparison, he may be capable of…
It is a great improver of the understanding, by showing both men and affairs in a great variety of views.
But be this as it may, I am sure, that, if justice is not done there, there can be neither peace nor justice there, nor in any part of Europe.
If they punish, they make a promiscuous massacre; if they spare, they make a general act of oblivion.
It is not humanity, but laziness and inertness of mind, which produces the desire of this kind of indemnities.
But there is another cause full as powerful towards this security to enormous guilt,--the desire which possesses people who have once obtained power to enjoy it at their ease.
But when guilt is seen, though but for a time, to be furnished with the arms and to be invested with the robes of power, it seems to assume another nature, and to get, as it were, out of our jurisdiction.
The crimes we every day punish are really below the penalties we inflict.
It is extraordinary, that, as the wicked arts of this regicide and tyrannous faction increase in number, variety, and atrocity, the desire of punishing them becomes more and more faint, and the talk of an indemnity towards them every day…
This cruel indifference dignifies itself with the name of humanity.
I know it sounds plausible, and is readily adopted by those who have little sympathy with the sufferings of others, to wish to jumble the innocent and guilty into one mass by a general indemnity.
It is unworthy of the name of a government, which, taking justice out of the private hand, will not exercise it for the injured by the public arm.
He is unworthy of the name of man who would suffer it.
With these precautions, the very first foundation of settlement must be to call to a strict account those bloody and merciless offenders.
A council of mercy ought therefore to be appointed, with powers to report on each case, to soften the penalty, or entirely to remit it, according to circumstances.
Everything like lumping men in masses, and of forming tables of proscription, ought to be avoided.
In restoring order and justice, everything like retaliation ought to be religiously avoided; and an example ought to be set of a total alienation from the Jacobin proceedings in their accursed revolutionary tribunals.
They are naturally pointed out, not by their having outraged political and civil laws, nor their having rebelled against the state as a state, but by their having rebelled against the law of Nature and outraged man as man.
But where are the objects of justice, and of example, and of future security to the public peace?
The offences of war are obliterated by peace.
To punish them with lesser penalties would be to debilitate the commonwealth, and make the nation miserable, which it is the business of government to render happy and flourishing.
To punish them capitally would be to make massacres.
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