It was the first time that foreign powers, interfering in the concerns of a nation divided into parties, have thought proper to thrust wholly out of their councils, to postpone, to discountenance, to reject, and, in a manner, to disgrace…
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 the spirit and generosity would not have been less, if the policy had been more profound and more comprehensive,--that is, if it had taken in those considerations and those persons by whom, and, in some measure, for whom, monarchy…
It was derived from one and the same root: namely, that the person of the monarch of France was everything; and the monarchy, and the intermediate orders of the state, by which the monarchy was upheld, were nothing.
This admission of a false principle in the law of nations brought them into an apparent contradiction, when they insisted on the reëstablishment of the royal authority in France.
If we should think that a provident policy (perhaps now more than provident, urgent and necessary) should lead us to act, we cannot take measures as if nothing had been done.
Thus, without law or government of her own, France gives law to all the governments in Europe.
The very vices of the French system at home tend to give force to foreign exertions.
That country has but too much life in it, when everything around is so disposed to tameness and languor.
There is no vigor anywhere, except the distempered vigor and energy of France.
For this purpose we must put Europe before us, which plainly is, just now, in all its parts, in a state of dismay, derangement, and confusion, and, very possibly amongst all its sovereigns, full of secret heartburning, distrust, and mutual…
The system must be general; but it must be executed, not successively, or with interruption, but all together, uno flatu, in one melting, and one mould.
Whilst our disposition is uncertain, Spain will not dare to put herself in such a state of defence as will make her hostility formidable or her neutrality respectable.
To remain quiet, and to suffer them to make their own use of a naval power before our face, so as to awe and bully Spain into a submissive peace, or to drive them into a ruinous war, without any measure on our part, I fear is no plan at…
Clearly, it is better to do so than to suffer France to possess those spoils and that territory alone; which, without doubt, unresisted by us, she is altogether as able as she is willing to do.
That it is as much for the interest of Great Britain to prevent the predominancy of a French interest in that kingdom as if Spain were a province of the crown of Great Britain, or a state actually dependent on it,--full as much so as ever…
That Spain, from the actual and expected prevalence of French power, is in a most perilous situation,--perfectly dependent on the mercy of that republic.
This shows the difference between the policy of Louis the Fourteenth, who built a wall of brass about his kingdom, and that of Joseph the Second, who premeditatedly uncovered his whole frontier.
The great object for which we preserved Minorca, whilst we could keep it, and for which we still retain Gibraltar, both at a great expense, was, and is, to prevent the predominance of France over the Mediterranean.
That there never has been hitherto a period in which this kingdom would have suffered a French fleet to domineer in the Mediterranean, and to force Italy to submit to such terms as France would think fit to impose,--to say nothing of what…
She has fitted out a naval force, now actually at sea, by which she is enabled to give law to the whole Mediterranean.
That there are, on the contrary, many things in the internal circumstances of France (and perhaps of this country, too) which tend to fortify the principles of that fundamental policy, and which render the active assertion of those…
That there is nothing in the present internal state of things in France which alters the national policy with regard to the exterior relations of that country.
That the standing policy of this kingdom ever has been to watch over the external proceedings of France, (whatever form the interior government of that kingdom might take,) and to prevent the extension of its dominion or its ruling…
That France by its mere geographical position, independently of every other circumstance, must affect every state of Europe: some of them immediately, all of them through mediums not very remote.
They are not ignorant that in the present moment the object is less to form a king than to teach him that he should know how to wish no longer to be such.
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