They are not, I think, without some causes of apprehension and complaint; but these they do not owe to their Constitution, but to their own conduct.
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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To give them credit for what they have done in virtue of the authority they have usurped, or to excuse them in the crimes by which that authority has been acquired, it must appear that the same things could not have been accomplished…
I do not deny, that, among an infinite number of acts of violence and folly, some good may have been done.
But am I so unreasonable as to see nothing at all that deserves commendation in the indefatigable labors of this Assembly?
They facilitate the carrying of many points of moment; they keep the people together; they refresh the mind in its exertions; and they diffuse occasional gayety over the severe brow of moral freedom.
They warm the heart; they enlarge and liberalize our minds; they animate our courage in a time of conflict.
Grand, swelling sentiments of liberty I am sure I do not despise.
Experience is with me, and, I believe, the best opinions also.
But waiving all discussion on the parties who may claim the merit of this fallacious relief, has there been, in effect, any relief to the people in any form?
The people relieved themselves, in spite of the Assembly.
If they entertained such intentions, why did they order the obnoxious taxes to be paid?
When the revenue disappears in their hands, they have the presumption, in some of their late proceedings, to value themselves on the relief given to the people.
Above all, remember, that, in imposing on the imagination, the then managers of the system made a compliment to the freedom of men.
They were in this dilemma: If they continued to receive the assignats, cash must become an alien to their Treasury; if the Treasury should refuse those paper amulets, or should discountenance them in any degree, they must destroy the…
It could not escape him, that, if the Treasury paid three per cent for the use of a currency which should be returned seven per cent worse than the minister issued it, such a dealing could not very greatly tend to enrich the public.
What must have been the state into which the Assembly has brought your affairs, that the relief afforded by so vast a supply has been hardly perceptible?
But to do justice to the club, I believe the gentlemen who compose it to be wiser than they appear,--that they will be less liberal of their money than of their addresses, and that they would not give a dog's ear of their most rumpled and…
Are compensations to be made or a maintenance decreed to those whom they have robbed of their freehold in their office or expelled from their profession?
The credit of the ancient government was not, indeed, the best; but they could always, on some terms, command money, not only at home, but from most of the countries of Europe where a surplus capital was accumulated; and the credit of that…
In payment of a debt of twenty shillings a creditor may refuse all the paper of the Bank of England.
They forget that in England not one shilling of paper money of any description is received but of choice,--that the whole has had its origin in cash actually deposited,--and that it is convertible at pleasure, in an instant, and without…
By this scheme they took things of much price from the giver, comparatively of small value to the receiver; they ruined several trades; they pillaged the crown of its ornaments, the churches of their plate, and the people of their personal…
We are next to see how they have conducted themselves in contriving equal impositions, proportioned to the means of the citizens, and the least likely to lean heavy on the active capital employed in the generation of that private wealth…
They relieved themselves by throwing off the whole burden.
The people of the salt provinces, impatient under taxes damned by the authority which had directed their payment, very soon found their patience exhausted.
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