Every fear, every hope, will forward it; and then they who persist in opposing this mighty current in human affairs will appear rather to resist the decrees of Providence itself than the mere designs of men.
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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If a great change is to be made in human affairs, the minds of men will be fitted to it, the general opinions and feelings will draw that way.
The remedy must be where power, wisdom, and information, I hope, are more united with good intentions than they can be with me.
It will be the most important step yet taken to affect the existence of sovereigns, and the higher classes of life: I do not mean to exclude its effects upon all classes; but the first blow is aimed at the more prominent parts in the…
The ambassadors from the rights of man, and their admission into the diplomatic system, I hold to be a new era in this business.
But the few to whom I wish to submit my thoughts are of a character which will enable them to see danger without astonishment, and to provide against it without perplexity.
I confess freely that this evil sometimes happens from an overdone precaution; but it is when the measures are rash, ill-chosen, or ill-combined, and the effects rather of blind terror than of enlightened foresight.
I wind up all in a full conviction within my own breast, and the substance of which I must repeat over and over again, that the state of France is the first consideration in the politics of Europe, and of each state, externally as well as…
At no period has the power of France ever appeared with so formidable an aspect.
A few months since all sovereigns seemed disposed to unite against her; at present they all seem to combine in her favor.
But the terror of France has fallen upon all nations.
The whole is in the same strain, full of false philosophy and false rhetoric,--both, however, calculated to captivate and influence the vulgar mind, and to excite sedition in the countries in which it is ordered to be circulated.
There they have the impudence to state that they aim at no conquest: insinuating that all the old, lawful powers of the world had each made a constant, open profession of a design of subduing his neighbors.
This gang of murderers and savages have wholly laid waste and utterly ruined the beautiful and happy country of the Comtat Venaissin and the city of Avignon.
First, it shows that they are of opinion that the current opinions of the English have the greatest influence on the minds of the people in France, and indeed of all the people in Europe, since they catch with such astonishing eagerness at…
This leads, more directly and with much greater force than any proceeding with a regular and rational appearance, to two very material considerations.
Their houses will become places of rendezvous here, as everywhere else, and centres of cabal for whatever is mischievous and malignant in this country, particularly among those of rank and fashion.
These ministers will be so many spies and incendiaries, so many active emissaries of democracy.
In this situation, having destroyed the old government by their sedition, they would preserve as much of order as is necessary for the support of their own usurpation.
However, by playing, through this veto, the Assembly against the king, and the king against the Assembly, they have made themselves masters of both.
The present policy, therefore, of the Austrian politicians is, to recover despotism through democracy,--or, at least, at any expense, everywhere to ruin the description of men who are everywhere the objects of their settled and systematic…
Whilst he keeps up this hopeful lawsuit in view of the damages he may recover against individuals, he loses the hearts of a whole people, and the vast subsidies which his ancestors had been used to receive from them.
These counsellors forget that a corrupted army was the very cause of the ruin of his brother-in-law, and that he is himself far from secure from a similar corruption.
This scheme is full of intricacy, and may cause him everywhere to lose the hearts of his people.
By depressing the one and by raising the other they hope in the first place to increase his treasures and his army; and with these common instruments of royal power they flatter him that the democracy, which they help in his name to…
Politicians like Edmund Burke
