It is wholly with them; and if it should fail, you are a witness that nothing on our part has been wanting to free so large a part of our fellow-subjects and fellow-citizens from slavery, and to free government from the weakness and danger…
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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The concern you have done me the honor to take in my affairs will be an ample indemnity from all that I may suffer from the rapid judgments of those who choose to form their opinions of men, not from the life, but from their portraits in a…
But I acted then, as I act now, and as I hope I shall act always, from a strong impulse of right, and from motives in which popularity, either here or there, has but a very little part.
With the support of that consciousness I can bear a good deal of the coquetry of public opinion, which has her caprices, and must have her way.
Such honors belong exclusively to the tomb,--the natural and only period of human inconstancy, with regard either to desert or to opinion: for they are the very same hands which erect, that very frequently (and sometimes with reason…
To speak seriously,--let me assure you, my dear Sir, that, though I am not permitted to rejoice at all its effects, there is not one man on your side of the water more pleased to see the situation of Ireland so prosperous as that she can…
She has obtained, solely by her own efforts, the fruits of a great victory, which I am very ready to allow that the best efforts of her best well-wishers here could not have done for her so effectually in a great number of years, and…
A minister, who has never defended his measures in any other way than by railing at his adversaries, cannot have his palate made all at once to the relish of positive commendation.
But that ceremony being past, it would not be unworthy of the wisdom of Ireland to consider what consequences the extinguishing every spark of freedom in this country may have upon your own liberties.
We feel as men do, who, having placed an unbounded reliance on their force, have found it totally to fail on trial.
When men give up their violence and injustice without a struggle, their condition is next to desperate.
It acts with the officious cruelty of a mercenary nurse, who, under pretence of tenderness, stifles us with our clothes, and plucks the pillow from our heads.
Under this influence we have so little will of our own, that, even in any apparent activity we may be got to assume, I may say, without any violence to sense, and with very little to language, we are merely passive.
Had the crown pleased to retain the spirit, with regard to Ireland, which seems to be now all directed to America, we should have neglected our own immediate defence, and sent over the last man of our militia to fight with the last man of…
These principles of the opposition are the only thing which preserves a single symptom of life in the nation.
That opposition is composed of the far greater part of the independent property and independent rank of the kingdom, of whatever is most untainted in character, and of whatever ability remains unextinguished in the people, and of all which…
In that case, if I know anything of this country, another constitutional opposition can never be formed in it; and if this be impossible, it will be at least as much so (if there can be degrees in impossibility) to have a constitutional…
The possibility of the former is the only security for the existence of the latter.
If liberty cannot maintain its ground in this kingdom, I am sure that it cannot have any long continuance in yours.
But if ours be unstrung, yours will be hung up on a peg, and both will be mute forever.
It is not perennial, and would prove but a poor shelter for your liberty, when this nation, having no interest in its own, could look upon yours with the eye of envy and disgust.
You never received any sort of injury from them, and you are grown to that degree of importance that the discourses in your Parliament will have a much greater effect on our immediate fortune than our conversation can have upon yours.
I have done so, because I am ready to admit that to offend you without any cause would be as contrary to true policy as I am sure it must be to the inclinations of almost every one of us.
But that to which I attached myself the most particularly was, to fix the principle of a free trade in all the ports of these islands, as founded in justice, and beneficial to the whole, but principally to this, the seat of the supreme…
They are things not to my taste; and if they are looked upon as tests of friendship, I desire for one that I may be considered as an enemy.
Politicians like Edmund Burke
