A man is certainly the most perfect Protestant who protests against the whole Christian religion.
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.
gutenberg.org
Such an agreement we had with Protestant Dissenters in England, of those descriptions who came under the Toleration Act of King William and Queen Mary: an act coeval with the Revolution; and which ought, on the principles of the gentlemen…
All this shows that the religion which the king is bound to maintain has a positive part in it, as well as a negative,--and that the positive part of it (in which we are in perfect agreement with the Catholics and with the Church of…
It proves beyond all doubt, that the legislature did not mean to guard the Church on one part only, and to leave it defenceless and exposed upon every other.
The oath as effectually prevents the king from doing anything to the prejudice of the Church, in favor of sectaries, Jews, Mahometans, or plain avowed infidels, as if he should do the same thing in favor of the Catholics.
This is to show that at no time was the Protestant religion, undefined, established here or anywhere else, as I believe.
The good of the commonwealth is the rule which rides over the rest; and to this every other must completely submit.
Toleration, being a part of moral and political prudence, ought to be tender and large.
They who think religion of no importance to the state have abandoned it to the conscience or caprice of the individual; they make no provision for it whatsoever, but leave every club to make, or not, a voluntary contribution towards its…
Where there is property, there will be less theft; where there is marriage, there will always be less fornication.
Lawful enjoyment is the surest method to prevent unlawful gratification.
If legal ways are not found, illegal will be resorted to; and seditious clubs and confederacies, such as no man living holds in greater horror than I do, will grow and flourish, in spite, I am afraid, of anything which can be done to…
Among the rich, each individual, with or without a franchise, is of importance; the poor and the middling are no otherwise so than as they obtain some collective capacity, and can be aggregated to some corps.
Many are the collateral disadvantages, amongst a privileged people, which must attend on those who have no privileges.
If property be artificially separated from franchise, the franchise must in some way or other, and in some proportion, naturally attract property to it.
They who consider also the state of all sorts of tradesmen, shopkeepers, and particularly publicans in towns, must soon discern the disadvantages under which those labor who have no votes.
This universal exclusion seems to me a serious evil,--because many collateral oppressions, besides what I have just now stated, have arisen from it.
The candidates neither love nor respect nor fear them, individually or collectively.
The people of that description have no hold on the gentlemen who aspire to be popular representatives.
All classes in the obnoxious description, who could not be suspected of the lower crime of riot, might be involved in the odium, in the suspicion, and sometimes in the punishment, of a higher and far more criminal species of offence.
The punishment of low people for the offences usual among low people would warrant no inference against any descriptions of religion or of politics.
This is not a mere theory; though, whilst men are men, it is a theory that cannot be false.
And if they who compose the privileged body have not an interest, they must but too frequently have motives of pride, passion, petulance, peevish jealousy, or tyrannic suspicion, to urge them to treat the excluded people with contempt and…
It is power unlimited placed in the hands of an adverse description because it is an adverse description.
They who are excluded from votes (under proper qualifications inherent in the Constitution that gives them) are excluded, not from the state, but from the British Constitution.
Politicians like Edmund Burke
