Edmund Burke

The arguments of tyranny are as contemptible as its force is dreadful.

Shall we be more tender of the tyrants of our own time, when we see them acting worse tragedies under our eyes?

Shall we not use the same liberty that they do, when we can use it with the same safety, when to speak honest truth only requires a contempt of the opinions of those whose actions we abhor?

These professors of the rights of men are so busy in teaching others, that they have not leisure to learn anything themselves; otherwise they would have known that it is to the property of the citizen, and not to the demands of the…

The claim of the citizen is prior in time, paramount in title, superior in equity.

The spoil of the Church was now become the only resource of all their operations in finance, the vital principle of all their politics, the sole security for the existence of their power.

To cut off all appearance of connection between the crown and public justice, and to bring the whole under implicit obedience to the dictators in Paris, the old independent judicature of the Parliaments, with all its merits and all its…

Whilst the Parliaments existed, it was evident that the people might some time or other come to resort to them, and rally under the standard of their ancient laws.

We found these old institutions, on the whole, favorable to morality and discipline; and we thought they were susceptible of amendment, without altering the ground.

We thought that they were capable of receiving and meliorating, and above all of preserving, the accessions of science and literature, as the order of Providence should successively produce them.

It is from our attachment to a Church establishment, that the English nation did not think it wise to intrust that great fundamental interest of the whole to what they trust no part of their civil or military public service,--that is, to…

The people of England think that they have constitutional motives, as well as religious, against any project of turning their independent clergy into ecclesiastical pensioners of state.

They tremble for their liberty, from the influence of a clergy dependent on the crown; they tremble for the public tranquillity, from the disorders of a factious clergy, if it were made to depend upon any other than the crown.

They therefore made their Church, like their king and their nobility, independent.

They have ordained that the provision of this establishment might be as stable as the earth on which it stands, and should not fluctuate with the Euripus of funds and actions.

The men of England, the men, I mean, of light and leading in England, whose wisdom (if they have any) is open and direct, would be ashamed, as of a silly, deceitful trick, to profess any religion in name, which by their proceedings they…

If by their conduct (the only language that rarely lies) they seemed to regard the great ruling principle of the moral and the natural world as a mere invention to keep the vulgar in obedience, they apprehend that by such a conduct they…

They would find it difficult to make others believe in a system to which they manifestly gave no credit themselves.

The Christian statesmen of this land would, indeed, first provide for the multitude, because it is the multitude, and is therefore, as such, the first object in the ecclesiastical institution, and in all institutions.

They have been taught that the circumstance of the Gospel's being preached to the poor was one of the great tests of its true mission.

They think, therefore, that those do not believe it who do not take care it should be preached to the poor.

But as they know that charity is not confined to any one description, but ought to apply itself to all men who have wants, they are not deprived of a due and anxious sensation of pity to the distresses of the miserable great.

They are not repelled, through a fastidious delicacy, at the stench of their arrogance and presumption, from a medicinal attention to their mental blotches and running sores.

The English people are satisfied, that to the great the consolations of religion are as necessary as its instructions.

It ought to give a security to its justice against its power.