We hear much, from men who have not acquired their hardiness of assertion from the profundity of their thinking, about the omnipotence of a majority, in such a dissolution of an ancient society as hath taken place in France.
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
Alas! they little know how many a weary step is to be taken before they can form themselves into a mass which has a true politic personality.
They are a number of vague, loose individuals, and nothing more.
When men, therefore, break up the original compact or agreement which gives its corporate form and capacity to a state, they are no longer a people,--they have no longer a corporate existence,--they have no longer a legal coactive force to…
It is wholly artificial, and made, like all other legal fictions, by common agreement.
The idea of a people is the idea of a corporation.
When the supreme authority of the people is in question, before we attempt to extend or to confine it, we ought to fix in our minds, with some degree of distinctness, an idea of what it is we mean, when we say, the PEOPLE.
What in the result is likely to produce evil is politically false; that which is productive of good, politically true.
The practical consequences of any political tenet go a great way in deciding upon its value.
However, if in general it be not easy to determine concerning the lawfulness of such devious proceedings, which must be ever on the edge of crimes, it is far from difficult to foresee the perilous consequences of the resuscitation of such…
This question, in this latitude, is very hard to affirm or deny: but I am satisfied that no occasion can justify such a resumption, which would not equally authorize a dispensation with any other moral duty, perhaps with all of them…
Amongst these nice, and therefore dangerous points of casuistry, may be reckoned the question so much agitated in the present hour,--Whether, after the people have discharged themselves of their original power by an habitual delegation, no…
They are imposed to govern our conduct, not to exercise our ingenuity; and therefore our opinions about them ought not to be in a state of fluctuation, but steady, sure, and resolved.
But the very habit of stating these extreme cases is not very laudable or safe; because, in general, it is not right to turn our duties into doubts.
The place that determines our duty to our country is a social, civil relation.
We may have the same geographical situation, but another country; as we may have the same country in another soil.
It consists, in a great measure, in the ancient order into which we are born.
Men come in that manner into a community with the social state of their parents, endowed with all the benefits, loaded with all the duties of their situation.
Children are not consenting to their relation; but their relation, without their actual consent, binds them to its duties,--or rather it implies their consent, because the presumed consent of every rational creature is in unison with the…
Parents may not be consenting to their moral relation; but, consenting or not, they are bound to a long train of burdensome duties towards those with whom they have never made a convention of any sort.
But out of physical causes, unknown to us, perhaps unknowable, arise moral duties, which, as we are able perfectly to comprehend, we are bound indispensably to perform.
When we marry, the choice is voluntary, but the duties are not matter of choice: they are dictated by the nature of the situation.
On the contrary, the force of all the pacts which we enter into with any particular person or number of persons amongst mankind depends upon those prior obligations.
They arise from the relation of man to man, and the relation of man to God, which relations are not matters of choice.
We have obligations to mankind at large, which are not in consequence of any special voluntary pact.
Politicians like Edmund Burke
