If built upon a basis fundamentally erroneous, it can only be retrieved by some of those unforeseen dispensations which the all-wise, but mysterious, Governor of the world sometimes interposes, to snatch nations from ruin.
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 would not be pious error, but mad and impious presumption, for any one to trust in an unknown order of dispensations, in defiance of the rules of prudence, which are formed upon the known march of the ordinary providence of God.
It was not of that sort of war that I was amongst the least considerable, but amongst the most zealous advisers; and it is not by the sort of peace now talked of that I wish it concluded.
There could be no tie of honor in a society for pillage.
The moment this war came to be considered as a war merely of profit, the actual circumstances are such that it never could become really a war of alliance.
I don't find it denied, that, when a treaty is entered into for peace, a demand will be made on the Regicides to surrender a great part of their conquests on the Continent. 'Will they, in the present state of the war, make that surrender…
Alas! she has already paid for her own ransom the fund of equivalent,--and a dreadful equivalent it is, to England and to herself.
But I put Spain out of the question: she is a province of the Jacobin empire, and she must make peace or war according to the orders she receives from the Directory of Assassins.
In effect and substance, her crown is a fief of Regicide.
In that case we are thus situated: either we must give Europe, bound hand and foot, to France, or we must quit the West Indies without any one object, great or small, towards indemnity and security.
If we treat in the present situation of things, we have nothing in our hands that can redeem Europe.
But giving, as I freely give, every possible credit to these Eastern conquests, I ask one question:--On whom are they made?
It is evident, that, if we can keep our Eastern conquests, we keep them not at the expense of France, but at the expense of Holland, our ally,--of Holland, the immediate cause of the war, the nation whom we had undertaken to protect, and…
If we return the African and the Asiatic conquests, we put them into the hands of a nominal state (to that Holland is reduced) unable to retain them, and which will virtually leave them under the direction of France.
She loses so much carrying trade, and that means of keeping up the small degree of naval power she holds: for which policy alone, and not for any commercial gain, she maintains the Cape, or any settlement beyond it.
In that case, resentment, faction, and even necessity, will throw her more and more into the power of the new, mischievous Republic.
In truth, it appears to me, that, when we come to balance our account, we shall find in the proposed peace only the pure, simple, and unendowed charms of Jacobin amity.
We shall have the satisfaction of knowing that no blood or treasure has been spared by the Allies for support of the Regicide system.
We shall reflect that our plan was good neither for offence nor defence.
It would not be at all difficult to prove that an army of an hundred thousand men, horse, foot, and artillery, might have been employed against the enemy, on the very soil which he has usurped, at a far less expense than has been…
In these adventures it was not an enemy we had to vanquish, but a cemetery to conquer.
In carrying on the war in the West Indies, the hostile sword is merciful, the country in which we engage is the dreadful enemy.
There the European conqueror finds a cruel defeat in the very fruits of his success.
Every advantage is but a new demand on England for recruits to the West Indian grave.
Had we carried on the war on the side of France which looks towards the Channel or the Atlantic, we should have attacked our enemy on his weak and unarmed side.
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