You would not cure the evil by resolving that there should be no more monarchs, nor ministers of state, nor of the Gospel,--no interpreters of law, no general officers, no public councils.
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.
gutenberg.org
As these are the pretexts, so the ordinary actors and instruments in great public evils are kings, priests, magistrates, senates, parliaments, national assemblies, judges, and captains.
If you did, you would root out everything that is valuable in the human breast.
You would not secure men from tyranny and sedition by rooting out of the mind the principles to which these fraudulent pretexts apply?
Religion, morals, laws, prerogatives, privileges, liberties, rights of men, are the pretexts.
On the contrary, without care it may be used to vitiate our minds and to destroy our happiness.
As well might we in England think of waging inexpiable war upon all Frenchmen for the evils which they have brought upon us in the several periods of our mutual hostilities.
If there had been any just cause for this new religions persecution, the atheistic libellers, who act as trumpeters to animate the populace to plunder, do not love anybody so much as not to dwell with complacence on the vices of the…
This separation, as I have already taken the liberty of suggesting to you, I conceive to be one principal cause of the destruction of the old nobility.
A foolish imitation of the worst part of the manners of England, which impaired their natural character, without substituting in its place what perhaps they meant to copy, has certainly rendered them worse than formerly they were.
Denying, as I am well warranted to do, that the nobility had any considerable share in the oppression of the people, in cases in which real oppression existed, I am ready to admit that they were not without considerable faults and errors.
The advocates for this Revolution, not satisfied with exaggerating the vices of their ancient government, strike at the fame of their country itself, by painting almost all that could have attracted the attention of strangers, I mean their…
To compare the government of France for the last fifteen or sixteen years with wise and well-constituted establishments during that, or during any period, is not to act with fairness.
In that work he gives an idea of the state of France, very remote from the portrait of a country whose government was a perfect grievance, an absolute evil, admitting no cure but through the violent and uncertain remedy of a total…
I believe the difference in the form of the two governments to be amongst the causes of this advantage on the side of England: I speak of England, not of the whole British dominions,--which, if compared with those of France, will in some…
France far exceeds England in the multitude of her people; but I apprehend that her comparative wealth is much inferior to ours,--that it is not so equal in the distribution, nor so ready in the circulation.
When those instructions were given, there was no question but that abuses existed, and that they demanded a reform: nor is there now.
Had such a design been then even insinuated, I believe there would have been but one voice, and that voice for rejecting it with scorn and horror.
The instructions to the representatives to the States-General, from every district in that kingdom, were filled with projects for the reformation of that government, without the remotest suggestion of a design to destroy it.
I am no stranger to the faults and defects of the subverted government of France; and I think I am not inclined by nature or policy to make a panegyric upon anything which is a just and natural object of censure.
But admitting democracy not to have that inevitable tendency to party tyranny which I suppose it to have, and admitting it to possess as much good in it when unmixed as I am sure it possesses when compounded with other forms; does…
They think it rather the corruption and degeneracy than the sound constitution of a republic.
I admit that their necessities do compel them to this base and contemptible fraud.
In order to force the most reluctant into a participation of their pillage, they rendered their paper circulation compulsory in all payments.
They panted for a currency of any kind which might revive their perishing industry.
Politicians like Edmund Burke
