In that difference, you rightly observe that I have always done justice to your skill and ability as a navigator, and to your good intentions towards the safety of the cargo and of the ship's company.
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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This is my feeble, perhaps, but clear, positive, decided, long and maturely reflected and frequently declared opinion, from which all the events which have lately come to pass, so far from turning me, have tended to confirm beyond the…
There is, however, a sort of dialogue not quite so liable to these objections, because it approaches more nearly to truth and Nature: it is called CONTROVERSY.
If the writer who attacks another's notions does not deal fairly with his adversary, the diligent reader has it always in his power, by resorting to the work examined, to do justice to the original author and to himself.
Writers value themselves now on the instability of their opinions and the transitory life of their productions.
They write for youth, and it is sufficient, if the instruction "lasts as long as a present love, or as the painted silks and cottons of the season.
In truth, this work has a tendency to alarm us with symptoms of public suicide.
Even buildings run up in haste with untempered mortar in that humid weather, if they are ill-contrived tenements, do not threaten long to incumber the earth.
My Lord, nothing can be learned from such examples, except the danger of being kings, queens, nobles, priests, and children, to be butchered on account of their inheritance.
These are things at which not vice, not crime, not folly, but wisdom, goodness, learning, justice, probity, beneficence, stand aghast.
Whatever the politician or preacher of September or of October may think of the matter, it is a most comfortless, disheartening, desolating example.
Dreadful is the example of ruined innocence and virtue, and the completest triumph of the completest villany that ever vexed and disgraced mankind!
The example is ruinous in every point of view, religious, moral, civil, political.
It establishes that dreadful maxim of Machiavel, that in great affairs men are not to be wicked by halves.
This maxim is not made for a middle sort of beings, who, because they cannot be angels, ought to thwart their ambition, and not endeavor to become infernal spirits.
It is too well exemplified in the present time, where the faults and errors of humanity, checked by the imperfect, timorous virtues, have been overpowered by those who have stopped at no crime.
It is a dreadful part of the example, that infernal malevolence has had pious apologists, who read their lectures on frailties in favor of crimes,--who abandon the weak, and court the friendship of the wicked.
To root out these maxims, and the examples that support them, is a wise object of years of war.
The October politician is so full of charity and good-nature, that he supposes that these very robbers and murderers themselves are in a course of melioration: on what ground I cannot conceive, except on the long practice of every crime…
Poor Truth has had a hard work of it, with her little pickaxe.
If we please, we may fill up the place of the butchered Abel; and whilst we wait the destiny of the departed brother, we may enjoy the advantages of the partnership, by entering without delay into a shop of ready-made bankruptcy and famine.
The evil spirit by which they are possessed, though essentially a liar, is forced by the tortures of conscience to confess the truth,--to confess enough for their condemnation, but not for their amendment.
They are convinced of it; and accordingly the wretches have done all they can to preserve their lives, and to secure their power; but not one step have they taken to amend the one or to make a more just use of the other.
Are they not the very same ruffians, thieves, assassins, and regicides that they were from the beginning?
Have they diversified the scene by the least variety, or produced the face of a single new villany?
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