Edmund Burke

If I suffer in my reputation for it in Ireland, I am sorry; but it neither does nor can affect me so nearly as my suffering in Bristol for having wished to unite the interests of the two nations in a manner that would secure the supremacy…

The executions, taking those which have been made, which are now ordered, and which may be the natural consequence of the convictions in Surrey, will be undoubtedly too many to answer any good purpose.

For God's sake entreat of Lord North to take a view of the sum total of the deaths, before any are ordered for execution; for by not doing something of this kind people are decoyed in detail into severities they never would have dreamed…

The scene in Surrey would have affected the hardest heart that ever was in an human breast.

Justice and mercy have not such opposite interests as people are apt to imagine.

I really feel uneasy on this business, and should consider it as a sort of personal favor, if you do something to limit the extent and severity of the law on this point.

Without great care and sobriety, criminal justice generally begins with anger and ends in negligence.

The first that are brought forward suffer the extremity of the law, with circumstances of mitigation of their case; and after a time, the most atrocious delinquents escape merely by the satiety of punishment.

If I understand the temper of the public at this moment, a very great part of the lower and some of the middling people of this city are in a very critical disposition, and such as ought to be managed with firmness and delicacy.

In general, they rather approve than blame the principles of the rioters, though the better sort of them are afraid of the consequences of those very principles which they approve.

This keeps their minds in a suspended and anxious state, which may very easily be exasperated by an injudicious severity into desperate resolutions,--or by weak measures on the part of government it may be encouraged to the pursuit of…

There is no doubt that the approaching executions will very much determine the future conduct of those people.

They ought to be such as will humble, not irritate.

Nothing will make government more awful to them than to see that it does not proceed by chance or under the influence of passion.

Men who see their lives respected and thought of value by others come to respect that gift of God themselves.

The sense of justice in men is overloaded and fatigued with a long series of executions, or with such a carnage at once as rather resembles a massacre than a sober execution of the laws.

We ought to recollect the poison which, under the name of antidotes against Popery, and such like mountebank titles, has been circulated from our pulpits and from our presses, from the heads of the Church of England and the heads of the…

This delusion furnishes no reason for suffering that abominable spirit to be kept alive by inflammatory libels or seditious assemblies, or for government's yielding to it, in the smallest degree, any point of justice, equity, or sound…

So far from it, I am clearly of opinion that on the late occasion the Catholics ought to have been taken, more avowedly than they were, under the protection of government, as the Dissenters had been on a similar occasion.

But though we ought to protect against violence the bigotry of others, and to correct our own too, if we have any left, we ought to reflect, that an offence which in its cause is national ought not in its effects to be vindicated on…

For my own part, I think the fire is not extinguished,--on the contrary, it seems to require the attention of government more than ever; but, as a part of any methodical plan for extinguishing this flame, it really seems necessary that the…

I pray that it may be recollected that the chief delinquents have hitherto escaped, and very many of those who are fallen into the hands of justice are a poor, thoughtless set of creatures, very little aware of the nature of their offence.

The preachers of mischief remain safe, and are wicked enough not to feel for their deluded disciples,--no, not at all.

I would not plead the ignorance of the law in any, even the most ignorant, as a justification; but I am sure, that, when the question is of mercy, it is a very great and powerful argument.

The absolute and entire impunity attending the same offence in Edinburgh, which was over and over again urged as an example and encouragement to these unfortunate people, might be a means of deluding them.