The Englishman in America will feel that this is slavery: that it is legal slavery will be no compensation either to his feelings or his understanding.
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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It is necessary to coerce the negligent, to restrain the violent, and to aid the weak and deficient, by the overruling plenitude of her power.
The means of recovering our affairs are not obvious.
If I possess nothing else, I am sure I possess the temper that is fit for your service.
Great and acknowledged force is not impaired, either in effect or in opinion, by an unwillingness to exert itself.
Fortunate indeed, if he lives to see nothing that shall vary the prospect, and cloud the setting of his day!
Terror is not always the effect of force, and an armament is not a victory.
I do not choose to consume its strength along with our own; because in all parts it is the British strength that I consume.
What monsters have not been generated from this unnatural contention!
I do not know the method of drawing up an indictment against an whole people.
It does, in such constitutions, frequently happen (and nothing but the dismal, cold, dead uniformity of servitude can prevent its happening) that the subordinate parts have many local privileges and immunities.
Instead of filling me with pride, I am exceedingly humbled by it.
What is it we have got by all our menaces, which have been many and ferocious?
What advantage have we derived from the penal laws we have passed, and which, for the time, have been severe and numerous?
Turn your eyes to those popular grants from whence all your great supplies are come, and learn to respect that only source of public wealth in the British empire.
None will barter away the immediate jewel of his soul.
The whole is delusion, from one end to the other.
As long as you have the wisdom to keep the sovereign authority of this country as the sanctuary of liberty, the sacred temple consecrated to our common faith, wherever the chosen race and sons of England worship freedom, they will turn…
But, until you become lost to all feeling of your true interest and your natural dignity, freedom they can have from none but you.
This is, however, saying too little; for to try a man under that act is, in effect, to condemn him unheard.
Whenever a rebellion really and truly exists, which is as easily known in fact as it is difficult to define in words, government has not entered into such military conventions, but has ever declined all intermediate treaty which should put…
It is as opposite to reason and prudence as it is to humanity and justice.
But it really appears to me that the means which this act employs are at least as exceptionable as the end.
The very names of affection and kindred, which were the bond of charity whilst we agreed, become new incentives to hatred and rage when the communion of our country is dissolved.
The man of the most declared pride scarcely dares to trust his own heart with this dreadful secret of ambition.
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