The other Whig managers regarded (as he did) the overturning of the monarchy by a republican faction with the very same horror and detestation with which they regarded the destruction of the privileges of the people by an arbitrary monarch.
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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There are of this two famous instances in the knowledge of the present age: I mean that of the Restoration, and that of the Revolution: in both these great events were the regal power and the rights of the people recovered.
This right the nation hath asserted, and recovered out of the hands of those who had dispossessed them of it at several times.
Nothing is plainer than that the people have a right to the laws and the Constitution.
And the Commons take leave to observe, that the authority of this Parliamentary settlement is a matter of the greatest consequence to maintain, in a case where the hereditary right to the crown is contested.
For, if the resistance at the Revolution was illegal, the Revolution settled in usurpation, and this act can have no greater force and authority than an act passed under a usurper.
The resistance at the Revolution, which was founded in unavoidable necessity, could be no defence to a man that was attacked for asserting that the people might cancel their allegiance at pleasure, or dethrone and murder their sovereign by…
He distinguishes it with the same care from the principles of regicide and republicanism, and the sorts of resistance condemned by the doctrines of the Church of England, and which ought to be condemned by the doctrines of all churches…
The Solicitor-General, Sir Robert Eyre, distinguishes expressly the case of the Revolution, and its principles, from a proceeding at pleasure, on the part of the people, to change their ancient Constitution, and to frame a new government…
The Revolution did not introduce any innovation; it was a restoration of the ancient fundamental Constitution of the kingdom, and giving it its proper force and energy.
If, therefore, the doctrine which the Apostles had laid down was only to continue the peace of the world, as thinking the death of some few particular persons better to be borne with than a civil war, sure it is the highest breach of that…
For questioning the right to the crown here in England has procured the shedding of more blood and caused more slaughter than all the other matters tending to disturbances in the government put together.
That point being fixed, and laying fast hold of a strong bottom, our speculations may swing in all directions without public detriment, because they will ride with sure anchorage.
Two things are equally evident: the first is, that the legislature possesses the power of regulating the succession of the crown; the second, that in the exercise of that right it has uniformly acted as if under the restraints which the…
This power is and ever was inherent in the supreme sovereignty, and was not, as the political divines vainly talk, acquired by the Revolution.
I now proceed to show that the Whig managers for the Commons meant to preserve the government on a firm foundation, by asserting the perpetual validity of the settlement then made, and its coercive power upon posterity.
He was a learned and an able man; full of honor, integrity, and public spirit; no lover of innovation; nor disposed to change his solid principles for the giddy fashion of the hour.
The prudence, steadiness, and vigilance of that man, joined to the greatest possible lenity in his character and his politics, preserved the crown to this royal family, and, with it, their laws and liberties to this country.
He loved peace, and he helped to communicate the same disposition to nations at least as warlike and restless as that in which he had the chief direction of affairs.
The Constitution of England is founded upon compact; and the subjects of this kingdom have, in their several public and private capacities, as legal a title to what are their rights by law as a prince to the possession of his crown.
This was the principle laid down and carried through all that was said with respect to ALLEGIANCE; and on WHICH FOUNDATION, in the name and on the behalf of all the commons of Great Britain, we assert and justify that resistance by which…
The nature of such an original contract of government proves that there is not only a power in the people, who have inherited its freedom, to assert their own title to it, but they are bound in duty to transmit the same Constitution to…
And the uniform preservation of such a Constitution for so many ages, without any fundamental change, demonstrates to your Lordships the continuance of the same contract.
The terms of such a Constitution do not only suppose, but express, an original contract between the crown and the people, by which that supreme power was (by mutual consent, and not by accident) limited and lodged in more hands than one.
The nature of our Constitution is that of a limited monarchy, wherein the supreme power is communicated and divided between Queen, Lords, and Commons, though the executive power and administration be wholly in the crown.
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