Edmund Burke

The merits of the war with the former have been argued solely on political grounds.

To prevent the mischievous doctrines of the latter from corrupting our minds, matter and argument have been supplied abundantly, and even to surfeit, on the excellency of our own government.

But nothing has been done to make us feel in what manner the safety of that government is connected with the principle and with the issue of this war.

Accordingly, all the arguments against a compliance with what was represented as the popular desire (urged on with all possible vehemence and earnestness by the Jacobins) have appeared flat and languid, feeble and evasive.

They spoke neither to the understanding nor to the heart.

Public credit, that great, but ambiguous principle, which has so often been predicted as the cause of our certain ruin, but which for a century has been the constant companion, and often the means, of our prosperity and greatness, had its…

They are now in almost every market-town: and this circumstance (whether the thing be carried to an excess or not) demonstrates the astonishing increase of private confidence, of general circulation, and of internal commerce,--an increase…

No sighing or panting after negotiation; no motions from the opposition to force the ministry into a peace; no messages from ministers to palsy and deaden the resolution of Parliament or the spirit of the nation.

They did not so much as advise the king to listen to the propositions of the enemy, nor to seek for peace, but through the mediation of a vigorous war.

He persevered to expel the fears of his people by his fortitude, to steady their fickleness by his constancy, to expand their narrow prudence by his enlarged wisdom, to sink their factious temper in his public spirit.

In spite of his people, he resolved to make them great and glorious,--to make England, inclined to shrink into her narrow self, the arbitress of Europe, the tutelary angel of the human race.

In spite of the ministers, who staggered under the weight that his mind imposed upon theirs, unsupported as they felt themselves by the popular spirit, he infused into them his own soul, he renewed in them their ancient heart, he rallied…

Under the British union, the union of Europe was consolidated; and it long held together with a degree of cohesion, firmness, and fidelity not known before or since in any political combination of that extent.

That heartless and dispirited people, whom Lord Somers had represented about two years before as dead in energy and operation, continued that war, to which it was supposed they were unequal in mind and in means, for near thirteen years.

It has been done to show that the British nation was then a great people,--to point out how and by what means they came to be exalted above the vulgar level, and to take that lead which they assumed among mankind.

To qualify us for that preëminence, we had then an high mind and a constancy unconquerable; we were then inspired with no flashy passions, but such as were durable as well as warm, such as corresponded to the great interests we had at…

All the art of Greece and all the pride and power of Eastern monarchs never heaped upon their ashes so grand a monument.

We ought with reverence to approach that tremendous divinity, that loves courage, but commands counsel.

It is never to be entered into without a mature deliberation,--not a deliberation lengthened out into a perplexing indecision, but a deliberation leading to a sure and fixed judgment.

Nothing is so rash as fear; and the counsels of pusillanimity very rarely put off, whilst they are always sure to aggravate, the evils from which they would fly.

This was to know the true art of gaining the affections and confidence of an high-minded people; this was to understand human nature.

It has nothing that can keep the mind erect under the gusts of adversity.

Speculative plunder,--contingent spoil,--future, long adjourned, uncertain booty,--pillage which must enrich a late posterity, and which possibly may not reach to posterity at all,--these, for any length of time, will never support a…

The blood of man should never be shed but to redeem the blood of man.

It is well shed for our family, for our friends, for our God, for our country, for our kind.