Edmund Burke

The contests between the tyrants is the only vital principle that can be discerned in France.

Most of the slaves choose a quiet, however reluctant, submission to those who are somewhat satiated with blood, and who, like wolves, are a little more tame from being a little less hungry, in preference to an irruption of the famished…

This circumstance assures some degree of permanence to the power of those whom we know to be permanently our rancorous and implacable enemies.

But to those very enemies who have sworn our destruction we have ourselves given a further and far better security, by rendering the cause of the royalists desperate.

Not where, under Providence, the hopes of Englishmen used to be placed, in our own courage and in our own virtues, but in the moderation and virtue of the most atrocious monsters that have ever disgraced and plagued mankind.

The only excuse to be made for all our mendicant diplomacy is the same as in the case of all other mendicancy, namely, that it has been founded on absolute necessity.

Necessity, as it has no law, so it has no shame.

I am thoroughly satisfied, that, if we degrade ourselves, it is the degradation which will subject us to the yoke of necessity, and not that it is necessity which has brought on our degradation.

My view of this was different: I liked the loan, not from the influence which it might have on the enemy, but on account of the temper which it indicated in our own people.

This alone is a consideration of any importance; because all calculation formed upon a supposed relation of the habitudes of others to our own, under the present circumstances, is weak and fallacious.

The adversary must be judged, not by what we are, or by what we wish him to be, but by what we must know he actually is: unless we choose to shut our eyes and our ears to the uniform tenor of all his discourses, and to his uniform course…

What does he find us, when he puts us to the proof of what English interest and English honor demand?

The effect on the enemy is not in what he may speculate on our resources, but in what he shall feel from our arms.

The circumstances of the loan have proved beyond a doubt three capital points, which, if they are properly used, may be advantageous to the future liberty and happiness of mankind.

In the first place, the loan demonstrates, in regard to instrumental resources, the competency of this kingdom to the assertion of the common cause, and to the maintenance and superintendence of that which it is its duty and its glory to…

Secondly, it brings to light what, under the most discouraging appearances, I always reckoned on: that, with its ancient physical force, not only unimpaired, but augmented, its ancient spirit is still alive in the British nation.

A corrupt and improvident loan, like everything else corrupt or prodigal, cannot be too much condemned; but there is a short-sighted parsimony still more fatal than an unforeseeing expense.

To force that market, or any market, is of all things the most dangerous.

For a small temporary benefit, the spring of all public credit might be relaxed forever.

To advance their money, they risk it; and the risk is to be included in the price.

In effect, it would be the most unjust and impolitic of all things,--unequal taxation.

It would throw upon one description of persons in the community that burden which ought by fair and equitable distribution to rest upon the whole.

None on account of their dignity should be exempt; none (preserving due proportion) on account of the scantiness of their means.

The moment a man is exempted from the maintenance of the community, he is in a sort separated from it,--he loses the place of a citizen.

But the compulsion ought to be known, and well defined, and well distinguished; for otherwise treaty only weakens the energy of compulsion, while compulsion destroys the freedom of a bargain.