Are the decorations of temples an expenditure less worthy a wise man than ribbons, and laces, and national cockades, and petit maisons, and petit soupers, and all the innumerable fopperies and follies in which opulence sports away the…
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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It does not appear to me that the expenses of those whom you are going to expel do in fact take a course so directly and so generally leading to vitiate and degrade and render miserable those through whom they pass as the expenses of those…
I am sure that no consideration, except the necessity of submitting to the yoke of luxury and the despotism of fancy, who in their own imperious way will distribute the surplus product of the soil, can justify the toleration of such trades…
It was your business to correct and mitigate everything which was noxious in this passion, as in all the passions.
It would be like the attempt to destroy (if it were in our competence to destroy) the expansive force of fixed air in nitre, or the power of steam, or of electricity, or of magnetism.
This is, in my opinion, a rule of profound sense, and ought never to depart from the mind of an honest reformer.
If the injustice of the course pursued in France be clear, the policy of the measure, that is, the public benefit to be expected from it, ought to be at least as evident, and at least as important.
If to this be added an expulsion from their habitations and a confiscation of all their goods, I am not sagacious enough to discover how this despotic sport made of the feelings, consciences, prejudices, and properties of men can be…
They say it is not made from wanton rapacity; that it is a great measure of national policy, adopted to remove an extensive, inveterate, superstitious mischief.--It is with the greatest difficulty that I am able to separate policy from…
The men who compose this interest look for their security, in the first instance, to the fidelity of government; in the second, to its power.
The republic of Berne, one of the happiest, the most prosperous, and the best-governed countries upon earth, is one of the great objects at the destruction of which they aim.
We cannot be ignorant of the spirit of atheistical fanaticism, that is inspired by a multitude of writings dispersed with incredible assiduity and expense, and by sermons delivered in all the streets and places of public resort in Paris.
What vestiges of liberty or property have they left?
They have compelled all men, in all transactions of commerce, in the disposal of lands, in civil dealing, and through the whole communion of life, to accept, as perfect payment and good and lawful tender, the symbols of their speculations…
It is true that this particular part of your general confiscation does not affect England, as a precedent in point; but the reason applies, and it goes a great way.
You may suppose that we do not approve your confiscation of the revenues of bishops, and deans, and chapters, and parochial clergy possessing independent estates arising from land, because we have the same sort of establishment in England.
Those of you who have robbed the clergy think that they shall easily reconcile their conduct to all Protestant nations, because the clergy whom they have thus plundered, degraded, and given over to mockery and scorn, are of the Roman…
I hope their partisans in England (to whom I rather attribute very inconsiderate conduct than the ultimate object in this detestable design) will succeed neither in the pillage of the ecclesiastics nor in the introduction of a principle of…
I believe the instances of eminent depravity may be as rare amongst them as those of transcendent goodness.
If this letter should ever come into their hands, I hope they will believe there are those of our nation who feel for their unmerited fall, and for the cruel confiscation of their fortunes, with no common sensibility.
I pay this tribute without reluctance to the memory of that noble, reverend, learned, and excellent person; and I should do the same with equal cheerfulness to the merits of the others, who I believe are still living, if I did not fear to…
I allow all this, because I am a man who have to deal with men, and who would not, through a violence of toleration, run into the greatest of all intolerance.
It was to stimulate their cannibal appetites (which one would think had been gorged sufficiently) by variety and seasoning,--and to quicken them to an alertness in new murders and massacres, if it should suit the purpose of the Guises of…
No: it was to teach them to persecute their own pastors; it was to excite them, by raising a disgust and horror of their clergy, to an alacrity in hunting down to destruction an order which, if it ought to exist at all, ought to exist not…
What should we say to those who could think of retaliating on the Parisians of this day the abominations and horrors of that time?
Politicians like Edmund Burke
