Now the reception is cold indeed; and therefore, as the asylum abroad is destroyed, the hardship at home is doubled.
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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To deny them at home, and to make the happiness of acquiring some of them somewhere else felony or high treason, is a piece of cruelty, in which, till very lately, I did not suppose this age capable of persisting.
Common sense and common justice dictate this at least, as some sort of compensation to a people for their slavery.
This is the thing meant by those who look upon the public revenue only as a spoil, and will naturally wish to have as few as possible concerned in the division of the booty.
I know well that there is a cant language current, about the difference between an exclusion from employments, even to the most rigorous extent, and an exclusion from the natural benefits arising from a man's own industry.
This has surely much more the air of a table of proscription than an act of grace.
One would imagine that a bill inflicting such a multitude of incapacities had followed on the heels of a conquest made by a very fierce enemy, under the impression of recent animosity and resentment.
To look at the bill in the abstract, it is neither more nor less than a renewed act of UNIVERSAL, UNMITIGATED, INDISPENSABLE, EXCEPTIONLESS DISQUALIFICATION.
The whole merit or demerit of the measure depends upon the plans and dispositions of those by whom the act was made, concurring with the general temper of the Protestants of Ireland, and their aptitude to admit in time of some part of that…
JACK CARTER understood perfectly the doctrine of looking to the end, with an indifference to the means, and the probability of much good arising from great evil.
He will in the following constitutional paper observe how well, in their enigmatical style, like the Assembly and their abettors, the old philosophers proscribe all hereditary distinction, and bestow it only on virtue and wisdom, according…
The reader has perceived, from the last lines of this curious state-paper, how well the National Assembly has copied its union of the profession of universal peace with the practice of murder and confusion, and the blast of the trumpet of…
They contain more good morality and less bad politics, they had much more foundation in real oppression, and they have the recommendation of being much better adapted to the capacities of those for whose instruction they were intended.
He meant only, to the best of his power, to guard the public against the ill designs of factions out of doors.
Fox was the last man in England to be trusted by a KING, because he was by PRINCIPLE a REPUBLICAN, and consequently an enemy to MONARCHY.
This patriotic declaration immediately alarmed the swarm of courtly insects that live only in the sunshine of ministerial favor.
We will, however, state the fact, leaving it to the ingenuity of our readers to discover what we dare not publish.
A very dark intrigue has lately been discovered, the authors of which are well known to us; but until the glorious day shall come when it will not be a LIBEL to tell the TRUTH, we must not be so regardless of our own safety as to publish…
I have stated the calamities which have fallen upon a great prince and nation, because they were not alarmed at the approach of danger, and because, what commonly happens to men surprised, they lost all resource when they were caught in it.
All this accumulation of calamity, the greatest that ever fell upon one man, has fallen upon his head, because he had left his virtues unguarded by caution,--because he was not taught, that, where power is concerned, he who will confer…
Let those who have the trust of political or of natural authority ever keep watch against the desperate enterprises of innovation: let even their benevolence be fortified and armed.
Such admirers were our fathers, to whom we owe this splendid inheritance.
We ought to understand it according to our measure, and to venerate where we are not able presently to comprehend.
Let us then consider, that all these were but so many preparatory steps to qualify a man, and such a man, tinctured with no national prejudice, with no domestic affection, to admire, and to hold out to the admiration of mankind, the…
Rational and experienced men tolerably well know, and have always known, how to distinguish between true and false liberty, and between the genuine adherence and the false pretence to what is true.
Politicians like Edmund Burke
