An entail of dependence is a bad reward of merit.
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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Every resolution of government required a sort of civil war to put it in execution.
Order and justice took place, until everything was reduced to obedience; then a severe and regular oppression succeeded the former disorderly tyranny.
Men little think how immorally they act in rashly meddling with what they do not understand.
It is hard to say which was most unpopular, the king or his minister.
In the mean time his Norman subjects in England, inconstant, warlike, independent, fierce by nature, fiercer by their conquest, could scarcely brook that subordination in which their safety consisted.
To avoid the perfections of extreme, all its several parts are so constituted as not alone to answer their own several ends, but also each to limit and control the others; insomuch that, take which of the principles you please, you will…
A final acquittance (or a quietus, as they term it) is scarcely ever to be obtained.
What is it we have got by all our menaces, which have been many and ferocious?
There may be a danger in straining too strongly the bonds of government.
The throne was now the prize of faction; and Harold, the son of Godwin, having the strongest faction, carried it.
Allow that to be the true policy of the British system, then most of the faults with which that system stands charged will appear to be, not imperfections into which it has inadvertently fallen, but excellencies which it has studiously…
Aldermen were created for life; they were then frequently made hereditary; some were vested with a power over others; and at this period we begin to hear of dukes who governed over several shires, and had many aldermen subject to them.
He was careful of the privileges of his subjects, and took care to have a body of the Saxon laws, very favorable to them, digested and enforced.
What security is there for stopping short at all in these wild conceits?
On that rock his whole adventure split, his whole scheme of economy was dashed to pieces.
He first introduced the study of his native language into this island.
The greatest kings and conquerors frequently resigned their crowns and shut themselves up in monasteries.
They may be led to act in this manner, that they may secure some portion of their own property, and perhaps to become partakers of the spoil of their own order.
Mere personal merit was then the only pretence to power.
They held that the life of a man was the only atonement for the life of a man.
On their principle, it is the resistance, and not the assault, which produces the danger.
When Henry the Fourth from that stair ascended the throne, high-minded as he was, he was not willing to kick away the ladder.
Instead of filling me with pride, I am exceedingly humbled by it.
But timidity with regard to the well-being of our country is heroic virtue.
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