Its great object is, to keep atheistic and republican doctrines from making their way in that kingdom.
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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As to the clergy, they are the only thing in Spain that looks like an independent order; and they are kept in some respect by the Inquisition, the sole, but unhappy resource of public tranquillity and order now remaining in Spain.
This much is certain,--that the Roman people, if once the blind reverence they bear to the sanctity of the Pope, which is their only bridle, should relax, are naturally turbulent, ferocious, and headlong, whilst the police is defective…
If he should be elected Pope, or even come to have any weight with a new Pope, he will infallibly conjure up a democratic spirit in that country.
The people, once inflamed, will not be destitute of a leader.
These abuses were less felt whilst the Pontificate drew riches from abroad, which in some measure counterbalanced the evils of their remiss and jobbish government at home.
Various well-intended, but ill-understood practices, some of them existing, in their spirit at least, from the time of the old Roman Empire, still prevail; and that government is as blindly attached to old abusive customs as others are…
Milan, I am sure, nourishes great disquiets; and if Milan should stir, no part of Lombardy is secure to the present possessors,--whether the Venetian or the Austrian.
Italy is divided, as Germany and Switzerland are, into many smaller states, and with some considerable diversity as to forms of government; but as these divisions and varieties in Italy are not so considerable, so neither do I think the…
If early steps are not taken in some way or other to prevent the spreading of this influence, I scarcely think any of them perfectly secure.
But, indeed, those aristocracies, which comprehend whatever is considerable, wealthy, and valuable in Switzerland, do now so wholly depend upon opinion, and the humor of their multitude, that the lightest puff of wind is sufficient to blow…
To communicate peaceably the rights of men is the true mode of her showing her friendship; to force sovereigns to submit to those rights is her mode of hostility.
The rights and liberties she was bound to maintain are now a system of wrong and tyranny which she is bound to destroy.
In truth, within this century the aggrandizement of other sovereign houses has been such that there has been a great change in the whole state of Europe; and other nations as well as France may become objects of jealousy and apprehension.
Though at one time through France the independence of Europe was endangered, it is, and ever was, through her alone that the common liberty of Germany can be secured against the single or the combined ambition of any other power.
It is not her interest that that power should be wholly annihilated in the system of Europe.
It is always the interest of Great Britain that the power of France should be kept within the bounds of moderation.
Great Britain (to say nothing of the king's concern as one of that august body) has a serious interest in preserving it; but, except through the power of France, acting upon the common old principles of state policy, in the case we have…
France, the author of the Treaty of Westphalia, is the natural guardian of the independence and balance of Germany.
It is not easy to find or to conceive governments more mild and indulgent than these Church sovereignties; but good government is as nothing, when the rights of man take possession of the mind.
Let us only suffer any person to tell us his story, morning and evening, but for one twelvemonth, and he will become our master.
The writers of these papers, indeed, for the greater part, are either unknown or in contempt, but they are like a battery, in which the stroke of any one ball produces no great effect, but the amount of continual repetition is decisive.
The seeds are sown almost everywhere, chiefly by newspaper circulations, infinitely more efficacious and extensive than ever they were.
Be that as it may, it appears plain to me, from my best observation, that envy and ambition may, by art, management, and disposition, be as much excited amongst these descriptions of men in England as in any other country, and that they…
I once thought that the low estimation in which commerce was held in France might be reckoned among the causes of the late Revolution; and I am still of opinion that the exclusive spirit of the French nobility did irritate the wealthy of…
Politicians like Edmund Burke
