Edmund Burke

It is with the exultation of a little national pride I tell you that those amongst us who have wished to pledge the societies of Paris in the cup of their abominations have been disappointed.

With these ideas rooted in their minds, the Commons of Great Britain, in the national emergencies, will never seek their resource from the confiscation of the estates of the Church and poor.

We shall believe those reformers to be then honest enthusiasts, not, as now we think them, cheats and deceivers, when we see them throwing their own goods into common, and submitting their own persons to the austere discipline of the early…

What evil can arise from the quantity in any hand, whilst the supreme authority has the full, sovereign superintendence over this, as over any property, to prevent every species of abuse,--and whenever it notably deviates, to give to it a…

When once the commonwealth has established the estates of the Church as property, it can consistently hear nothing of the more or the less.

For these reasons, whilst we provide first for the poor, and with a parental solicitude, we have not relegated religion (like something we were ashamed to show) to obscure municipalities or rustic villages.

I give you opinions which have been accepted amongst us, from very early times to this moment, with a continued and general approbation, and which, indeed, are so worked into my mind that I am unable to distinguish what I have learned from…

This law is not subject to the will of those who, by an obligation above them, and infinitely superior, are bound to submit their will to that law.

Besides, they are less under responsibility to one of the greatest controlling powers on earth, the sense of fame and estimation.

Such persons, however elevated by flattery, arrogance, and self-opinion, must be sensible, that, whether covered or not by positive law, in some way or other they are accountable even here for the abuse of their trust.

I do not think they were unwise in ancient Rome, who, when they wished to new-model their laws, sent commissioners to examine the best-constituted republics within their reach.

For that reason, before we take from our establishment the natural, human means of estimation, and give it up to contempt, as you have done, and in doing it have incurred the penalties you well deserve to suffer, we desire that some other…

The whole has emanated from the simplicity of our national character, and from a sort of native plainness and directness of understanding, which for a long time characterized those men who have successively obtained authority among us.

I speak only from myself, when I disclaim, as I do with all possible earnestness, all communion with the actors in that triumph, or with the admirers of it.

Those who could make such an appointment must be guilty of a more flagrant breach of trust than any they have yet committed against the people.

I tremble for the cause of liberty, from such an example to kings.

Such must be the consequences of losing, in the splendor of these triumphs of the rights of men, all natural sense of wrong and right.

In the theatre, the first intuitive glance, without any elaborate process of reasoning, would show that this method of political computation would justify every extent of crime.

They would reject them on the modern, as they once did on the ancient stage, where they could not bear even the hypothetical proposition of such wickedness in the mouth of a personated tyrant, though suitable to the character he sustained.

We are alarmed into reflection; our minds (as it has long since been observed) are purified by terror and pity; our weak, unthinking pride is humbled under the dispensations of a mysterious wisdom.

This gives all Europe, in my opinion, but too close and connected a concern in what is done in France.

It was this opinion which mitigated kings into companions, and raised private men to be fellows with kings.

It was this, which, without confounding ranks, had produced a noble equality, and handed it down through all the gradations of social life.

It is this which has distinguished it under all its forms of government, and distinguished it to its advantage, from the states of Asia, and possibly from those states which flourished in the most brilliant periods of the antique world.

It is this which has given its character to modern Europe.