Men are considered as under some derangement of their intellects, when they see good and evil in a different light from other men,--when they choose nauseous and unwholesome food, and reject such as to the rest of the world seems pleasant…
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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We have two standards of judging, in this case, of the sanity and sobriety of any proceedings,--of unequal certainty, indeed, but neither of them to be neglected: the first is by the value of the object sought; the next is by the means…
As to the persons who desire this part in the Constitution, I have no reason to imagine that they are men who have nothing to lose and much to look for in public confusion.
Here we must be aided by persons of a contrary character; we must not listen to the desperate or the furious: but it is therefore necessary for us to distinguish who are the really indigent and the really intemperate.
When I find a great cry amongst the people who speculate little, I think myself called seriously to examine into it, and to separate the real cause from the ill effects of the passion it may excite, and the bad use which artful men may…
It is a matter of feeling; and as such persons generally have felt most of it, and are not of an over-lively sensibility, they are the best judges of it.
What I have always thought of the matter is this,--that the most poor, illiterate, and uninformed creatures upon earth are judges of a practical oppression.
I believe it to be possible for men to be mutinous and seditious who feel no grievance, but I believe no man will assert seriously, that, when people are of a turbulent spirit, the best way to keep them in order is to furnish them with…
Yet I confess, that, on occasions of this nature, I am the most afraid of the weakest reasonings, because they discover the strongest passions.
I rather conceive a participation in those privileges to be itself a remedy for some mental disorders.
For an exclusion from the privileges of British subjects is not a cure for so terrible a distemper of the human mind as they are pleased to suppose in their countrymen.
What reasons have you to dread the consequences of admitting the people possessing that property to some share in the protection of the Constitution?
What have you suffered in your peace, your prosperity, or, in what ought ever to be dear to a nation, your glory, by the last act by which you took the property of that people under the protection of the laws?
You are now asked to give, in some moderate measure, to your fellow-citizens, what Great Britain gave to you without any measure at all.
But on all sides we separated the means from the end: and we separated the cause of the moderate and rational from the ill-intentioned and seditious, which on such occasions are so frequently apt to march together.
Great Britain in 1782 rose above the vulgar ideas of policy, the ordinary jealousies of state, and all the sentiments of national pride and national ambition.
She surrendered that boundless superiority, for the preservation of which, and the acquisition, she had supported the English colonies in Ireland for so long a time, and at so vast an expense (according to the standard of those ages) of…
She saw that the Irish of her race were resolved to build their Constitution and their politics upon another bottom.
She saw that true policy did not require that they ever should have appeared in that character; or if it had done so formerly, the reasons had now ceased to operate.
She saw that the disposition of the leading part of the nation would not permit them to act any longer the part of a garrison.
Great Britain, finding the Anglo-Irish highly animated with a spirit which had indeed shown itself before, though with little energy and many interruptions, and therefore suffered a multitude of uniform precedents to be established against…
The mildness of government produced the first relaxation towards the Irish; the necessities, and, in part, too, the temper that predominated at this great change, produced the second and the most important of these relaxations.
With their views, the Anglo-Irish changed their maxims: it was necessary to demonstrate to the whole people that there was something, at least, of a common interest, combined with the independency, which was to become the object of common…
Their cries served only to augment their torture.
They were quite certain that no complaints of the natives would be heard on this side of the water with any other sentiments than those of contempt and indignation.
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