Happy people, if they know to proceed as they have begun!
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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Ten millions of men in a way of being freed gradually, and therefore safely to themselves and the state, not from civil or political chains, which, bad as they are, only fetter the mind, but from substantial personal bondage.
So far as it has gone, it probably is the most pure and defecated public good which ever has been conferred on mankind.
In contemplating that change, humanity has everything to rejoice and to glory in,--nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to suffer.
Here was a state of things which seemed to invite, and might perhaps justify, bold enterprise and desperate experiment.
A king without authority; nobles without union or subordination; a people without arts, industry, commerce, or liberty; no order within, no defence without; no effective public force, but a foreign force, which entered, a naked country at…
In estimating danger, we are obliged to take into our calculation the character and disposition of the enemy into whose hands we may chance to fall.
When men, circumstanced as these are, publicly declare such admiration of a foreign Constitution, and such contempt of our own, it would be, in the author of the Reflections, thinking as he does of the French Constitution, infamously to…
Do we not see their most considerable and accredited ministers, and several of their party of weight and importance, active in spreading mischievous opinions, in giving sanction to seditious writings, in promoting seditious anniversaries…
No! there is no plan of security to be listened to but from those who entertain the same fears with ourselves,--from those who think that the thing to be secured is a great blessing, and the thing against which we would secure it a great…
Provisions for security are not to be received from those who think that there is no danger.
And they will hope, that here, if antimonarchical opinions gain ground as they have done in France, they may, as in France, accomplish a revolution without a war.
A few assassinations and a very great destruction of property we know they consider as no real obstacles in the way of a grand political change.
In proportion as by these means the enterprising party is strengthened, the dread of a struggle is lessened.
They will not go to battle in favor of a cause in which their defeat might be more advantageous to the public than their victory.
They who think so well of the French Constitution certainly will not be the persons to carry on a war to prevent their obtaining a great benefit, or at worst a fair exchange.
It will tend totally to remove from their minds that very terror of a civil war which is held out as our sole security.
But it is the poorest defensive principle that ever was infused into the mind of man against the attempts of those who will enterprise.
Their security amounts in reality to nothing more than this,--that the difference between their republican system and the British limited monarchy is not worth a civil war.
Let us examine into the value of this security upon the principles of those who are more sober,--of those who think, indeed, the French Constitution better, or at least as good as the British, without going to all the lengths of the warmer…
A Constitution on sufferance is a Constitution condemned.
If he has any duty relative to it, his duty is to destroy it.
What motive has any rational man, who thinks in that manner, to spill his blood, or even to risk a shilling of his fortune, or to waste a moment of his leisure, to preserve it?
Mere spectacles, mere names, will become sufficient causes to stimulate the people to war and tumult.
When a man is from system furious against monarchy or episcopacy, the good conduct of the monarch or the bishop has no other effect than further to irritate the adversary.
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