Great men are never sufficiently shown but in struggles.
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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My law should not depend upon the fluctuation of the closet or the complexion of men.
Thus, arbitrary will (the last corruption of ruling power) step by step poisons the heart of every citizen.
And if incapacity is voted to be inherent in expulsion, if expulsion be arbitrary, incapacity is arbitrary also.
Let it be considered, that this argument goes as strongly against connivance, which you allow, as against toleration, which you reject.
Alas! it has none of those properties, but is the reverse of them all.
That you may judge in this instance (and it serves for the rest) of the difference between a great and a little economy, you will please to recollect, Sir, that Wales may be about the tenth part of England in size and population, and…
I would have toleration a part of establishment, as a principle favorable to Christianity, and as a part of Christianity.
The subscription to Scripture is the most astonishing idea I ever heard, and will amount to just nothing at all.
Nothing is plainer than that the people have a right to the laws and the Constitution.
Dissent, not satisfied with toleration, is not conscience, but ambition.
The Catholics of Ireland (as I have said) have the whole of our positive religion: our difference is only a negation of certain tenets of theirs.
Burke put a more strict rule upon himself than most moralists would put upon others.
I would make every man look everywhere, except to the intrigue of a court, for the improvement of his circumstances or the security of his fortune.
It does, in such constitutions, frequently happen (and nothing but the dismal, cold, dead uniformity of servitude can prevent its happening) that the subordinate parts have many local privileges and immunities.
I think, indeed, that Great Britain would be ruined by the separation of Ireland; but as there are degrees even in ruin, it would fall the most heavily on Ireland.
Is this, or anything like this, asked in favor of any human creature in Ireland?
If ever we ought to be economists even to parsimony, it is in the voluntary production of evil.
The bottom of this theory of persecution is false.
You have no security for anything, but that they will become what are called Franco-Jacobins, and reject the whole together.
When I assert anything else, as concerning the people of England, I speak from observation, not from authority.
To do nothing with them is extinction; to improve them is oppression.
Whatever ill-humors are afloat in the state, they will be sure to discharge themselves in a mingled torrent in the Cloaca Maxima of Jacobinism.
If anything is, one more than another, out of the power of man, it is to create a prejudice.
These people are only made to be the sport of tyrants.
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