The present war is, above all others of which we have heard or read, a war against landed property.
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.
gutenberg.org
That description of property is in its nature the firm base of every stable government,--and has been so considered by all the wisest writers of the old philosophy, from the time of the Stagyrite, who observes that the agricultural class…
But all must agree in one conclusion,--that, if the number diminishes, and at the same time every other sort of evidence tends to show an augmentation of trade, there can be no better indication.
But if they will look at it a little more attentively, they will find their gloomy comfort vanish.
The public income from these licenses has risen with very great regularity through a series of years which all must admit to have been years of prosperity.
When such is the vigor of our traffic in its minutest ramifications, we may be persuaded that the root and the trunk are sound.
There is evidence, which has appeared this very session before your House, infinitely more forcible and impressive to my apprehension than all the journals and ledgers of all the Inspectors-General from the days of Davenant.
It comes, not from one set, but from many opposite sets of witnesses, who all agree in nothing else: witnesses of the gravest and most unexceptionable character, and who confirm what they say, in the surest manner, by their conduct.
Our streets, our lanes, our shores, the river itself, which has so long been our pride, are impeded and obstructed and choked up by our riches.
This opens a subject on which every true lover of his country, and, at this crisis, every friend to the liberties of Europe, and of social order in every country, must dwell and expatiate with delight.
And here I am happy that I can administer an antidote to all despondence from the same dispensary from which the first dose of poison was supposed to have come.
If, from internal causes, as well as the consequence of hostilities, the tide ebbed in 1793, it rushed back again with a bore in the following year, and from that time has continued to swell and run every successive year higher and higher…
The value of our exports last year above the year 1792 (the mere increase of our commerce during the war) is equal to the average value of all the exports during the wars of William and Anne.
It has been already pointed out, that our imports have not kept pace with our exports: of course, on the face of the account, the balance of trade, both positively and comparatively considered, must have been much more than ever in our…
How can they affect to sweat and stagger and groan under their burdens, to whom the mines of Newfoundland, richer than those of Mexico and Peru, are now thrown in as a make-weight in the scale of their exorbitant opulence?
As to the great majority of the nation, they have done whatever, in their several ranks and conditions and descriptions, was required of them by their relative situations in society: and from those the great mass of mankind cannot depart…
They ask to be led and directed by those rulers whom Providence and the laws of their country have set over them, and under their guidance to walk in the ways of safety and honor.
They have in all things reposed an enduring, but not an unreflecting confidence.
That confidence demands a full return, and fixes a responsibility on the ministers entire and undivided.
If the public honor is tarnished, if the public safety suffers any detriment, the ministers, not the people, are to answer it, and they alone.
The responsibility which they are to dread is lest they should show themselves unequal to the expectation of a brave people.
The Reflections will be found to contain maxims of the soundest judicial policy, and do equal honor to the head and heart of their illustrious writer.
They contain a full and comprehensive view of the commerce, revenues, civil establishment, and general policy of the Company, and will therefore be peculiarly interesting at this time to the public.
Though in the stormy ocean of the last twenty-three years we have seldom sailed on the same tack, there has been nothing hostile in our signals or manoeuvres, and, on my part at least, there has been a cordial disposition towards friendly…
I have no anxiety in that respect, but to contribute my mite to do service, at a moment when service is much wanted.
Politicians like Edmund Burke
