They must have been animated with a very warm zeal against those opinions, because they were under no necessity of acting as they did, from any just cause of apprehension that the errors of this writer should be taken for theirs.
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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In their public capacity, in everything that meets the public ear or public eye, the body must be considered as unanimous.
But, after receiving the common allowance due to the common weakness of man, he wishes to owe no part of the indulgence of the world to its forgetfulness.
To abandon them would argue, not diffidence in his abilities, but treachery to his cause.
He is more happy to have his fidelity in representation recognized by the body of the people than if he were to be ranked in point of ability (and higher he could not be ranked) with those whose critical censure he has had the misfortune…
Taking in the whole view of life, it is more safe to live under the jurisdiction of severe, but steady reason, than under the empire of indulgent, but capricious passion.
For this reason the cold neutrality of abstract justice is, to a good and clear cause, a more desirable thing than an affection liable to be any way disturbed.
Angry friendship is sometimes as bad as calm enmity.
You know them but at a distance, on the statements of those who always flatter the reigning power, and who, amidst their representations of the grievances, inflame your minds against those who are oppressed.
You cannot see with your own eyes the sufferings and afflictions you cause.
You cannot feel distinctly how far the people are rendered better and improved, or more miserable and depraved, by what you have done.
You never go into the country, soberly and dispassionately to observe the effect of your measures on their objects.
You can never survey, from its proper point of sight, the work you have finished, before you decree its final execution.
They who always labor can have no true judgment.
It is the necessary instrument of tyranny and usurpation; and therefore I do not wonder that it has had an early establishment under your present lords.
These people are only made to be the sport of tyrants.
If they mean honestly, why do they not strengthen the arms of honest men to support their ancient, legal, wise, and free government, given to them in the spring of 1788, against the inventions of craft and the theories of ignorance and…
But these men are naturally despised by those who have heads to know, and hearts that are able to go through the necessary demands of bold, wicked enterprises.
They are not honest; they are only ineffectual and unsystematic in their iniquity.
In fact, they are nothing more or better than men engaged in desperate designs with feeble minds.
They are a sort of people who affect to proceed as if they thought that men may deceive without fraud, rob without injustice, and overturn everything without violence.
They act more in the manner of thieves who have got possession of an house than of conquerors who have subdued a nation.
The powers and policies by which they have succeeded are not those of great statesmen or great military commanders, but the practices of incendiaries, assassins, housebreakers, robbers, spreaders of false news, forgers of false orders from…
They have succeeded, and put over their country an insolent tyranny made up of cruel and inexorable masters, and that, too, of a description hitherto not known in the world.
It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free.
Politicians like Edmund Burke
