We know of no road to your coffers but through your affections.
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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Because the charters comprehend the essential forms by which you enjoy your liberties, we regard them as most sacred, and by no means to be taken away or altered without process, without examination, and without hearing, as they have…
We even think that they ought by no means to be altered at all, but at the desire of the greater part of the people who live under them.
As we disapproved of the proceedings with regard to the forms of your constitution, so we are equally tender of every leading principle of free government.
We never could think with approbation of putting the military power out of the coercion of the civil justice in the country where it acts.
We clear ourselves to you our brethren, to the present age, and to future generations, to our king and our country, and to Europe, which, as a spectator, beholds this tragic scene, of every part or share in adding this last and worst of…
We do not know how to qualify millions of our countrymen, contending with one heart for an admission to privileges which we have ever thought our own happiness and honor, by odious and unworthy names.
On the contrary, we highly revere the principles on which you act, though we lament some of their effects.
Armed as you are, we embrace you as our friends and as our brethren by the best and dearest ties of relation.
We view the establishment of the English colonies on principles of liberty as that which is to render this kingdom venerable to future ages.
In comparison of this, we regard all the victories and conquests of our warlike ancestors, or of our own times, as barbarous, vulgar distinctions, in which many nations, whom we look upon with little respect or value, have equalled, if not…
Those who have and who hold to that foundation of common liberty, whether on this or on your side of the ocean, we consider as the true, and the only true, Englishmen.
Those who depart from it, whether there or here, are attainted, corrupted in blood, and wholly fallen from their original rank and value.
That very liberty which you so justly prize above all things originated here; and it may be very doubtful, whether, without being constantly fed from the original fountain, it can be at all perpetuated or preserved in its native purity and…
None but England can communicate to you the benefits of such a constitution.
We allow that even this evil is worth the risk to men of honor, when rational liberty is at stake, as in the present case we confess and lament that it is.
Respecting your wisdom, and valuing your safety, we do not call upon you to trust your existence to your enemies.
We do not advise you to an unconditional submission.
You can have no friends in whom you cannot rationally confide.
This Constitution has therefore admitted innumerable improvements, either for the correction of the original scheme, or for removing corruptions, or for bringing its principles better to suit those changes which have successively happened…
We feel that the growth of the colonies is such a change of circumstances, and that our present dispute is an exigency as pressing as any which ever demanded a revision of our government.
If we set about this great work, on both sides, with the same conciliatory turn of mind, we may now, as in former times, owe even to our mutual mistakes, contentions, and animosities, the lasting concord, freedom, happiness, and glory of…
We also pledge ourselves to you, that we should give, even to those unhappy persons, an hearty support in effectuating the peace of the empire, and every opposition in an attempt to cast it again into disorder.
When that happy hour shall arrive, let us in all affection, recommend to you the wisdom of continuing, as in former times, or even in a more ample measure, the support of your government, and even to give to your administration some degree…
But when I insisted on the disgrace to government which must arise from their rejecting a proposition recommended by themselves, because their opposers had made a mixture, separable too by themselves, I was better heard.
Politicians like Edmund Burke
