The question is not, whether you are to overturn the Catholic, to set up the Protestant.
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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This religious war is not a controversy between sect and sect, as formerly, but a war against all sects and all religions.
The Constitutional clergy are not the ministers of any religion: they are the agents and instruments of this horrible conspiracy against all morals.
The French Revolution, impious at once and fanatical, had no other plan for domestic power and foreign empire.
It is through this destruction of religion that our enemies propose the accomplishment of all their other views.
We cannot, if we would, delude ourselves about the true state of this dreadful contest.
If this point of religion is thus given up, the grand instrument for reclaiming France is abandoned.
We have proposed to restore religion as well as monarchy; and in Toulon we have restored neither the one nor the other.
As to the inhabitants, they are a nest of Jacobins, which is delivered into our hands, not from principle, but from fear.
By means, however, of this foolish, mean, and jealous policy on our side, all the Royalists whom the English might select as most practicable, and most subservient to honest views, are totally excluded.
I know but one way of avoiding it, which is, to give a greater degree of simplicity to our politics.
The more we multiply troops there, the more we shall multiply causes and means of quarrel amongst ourselves.
The possession of Toulon, which, well managed, might be of the greatest advantage, will be the greatest misfortune that ever happened to this nation.
It signifies nothing whether we are wrong or right in the abstract; but in respect to our relation to Spain, with such principles followed up in practice, it is absolutely impossible that any cordial alliance can subsist between the two…
Nothing is so fatal to a nation as an extreme of self-partiality, and the total want of consideration of what others will naturally hope or fear.
But the only way of keeping that jealous and discordant mass from tearing its component parts to pieces, and hazarding the loss of the whole, is, to put the place into the nominal government of the regent, his officers being approved by us.
But all is upon that false principle of distrust, which, not confiding in strength, can never have the full use of it.
Never can we assume this command, if we will not risk the consequences.
This is a royal and commanding policy; and as long as we are true to it, we may give the law.
We should have all the magnanimity of good faith.
Other times, perhaps other measures; but in this awful hour our politics ought to be made up of nothing but courage, decision, manliness, and rectitude.
Here to be too presuming is the better error.
Adventure, therefore, and not caution, is our policy.
They who have much to lose have much to fear.
Distrust is good, or it is bad, according to our position and our purpose.
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