True humility, the basis of the Christian system, is the low, but deep and firm foundation of all real virtue.
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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They have therefore chosen a selfish, flattering, seductive, ostentatious vice, in the place of plain duty.
They find dispositions in the mind of such force and quality as may fit men, far better than the old morality, for the purposes of such a state as theirs, and may go much further in supporting their power and destroying their enemies.
If an author had written like a great genius on geometry, though his practical and speculative morals were vicious in the extreme, it might appear that in voting the statue they honored only the geometrician.
He ought, above all, to be cautious in recommending any writer who has carried marks of a deranged understanding: for where there is no sound reason, there can be no real virtue; and madness is ever vicious and malignant.
He ought to be fearful of putting into the hands of youth writers indulgent to the peculiarities of their own complexion, lest they should teach the humors of the professor, rather than the principles of the science.
He ought to be cautious how he recommends authors of mixed or ambiguous morality.
The magistrate, who in favor of freedom thinks himself obliged to suffer all sorts of publications, is under a stricter duty than any other well to consider what sort of writers he shall authorize, and shall recommend by the strongest of…
But if education takes in vice as any part of its system, there is no doubt but that it will operate with abundant energy, and to an extent indefinite.
So recommended, they soon form the character of the age.
Nothing ought to be more weighed than the nature of books recommended by public authority.
They are modern philosophers, which when you say of them, you express everything that is ignoble, savage, and hard-hearted.
It is not their necessity, but their nature, that impels them.
They do not commit crimes for their designs; but they form designs that they may commit crimes.
It is in that season that no man of sense or honor can be mistaken for one of them.
But it is then, and basking in the sunshine of unmerited fortune, that low, sordid, ungenerous, and reptile souls swell with their hoarded poisons; it is then that they display their odious splendor, and shine out in the full lustre of…
Full of dignity themselves, they respect dignity in all, but they feel it sacred in the unhappy.
They indulge their genius even to intemperance, in kindness to the afflicted, in generosity to the conquered,--forbearing insults, forgiving injuries, overpaying benefits.
It is at such times that noble minds give all the reins to their good nature.
Even wolves and tigers, when gorged with their prey, are safe and gentle.
If there is any good in them, it appears then or never.
It is in the relaxation of security, it is in the expansion of prosperity, it is in the hour of dilatation of the heart, and of its softening into festivity and pleasure, that the real character of men is discerned.
They may be forgotten by others, when the guilty themselves do not choose to cherish their recollection, and, by ruminating their offences, nourish themselves, through the example of their past, to the perpetration of future crimes.
There are situations (God forbid I should think that of the 5th and 6th of October one of them!) in which the best men may be confounded with the worst, and in the darkness and confusion, in the press and medley of such extremities, it may…
In my opinion their insolence appears more odious even than their crimes.
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