Thus, arbitrary will (the last corruption of ruling power) step by step poisons the heart of every citizen.
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.
gutenberg.org
On their principle, it is the resistance, and not the assault, which produces the danger.
They may be led to act in this manner, that they may secure some portion of their own property, and perhaps to become partakers of the spoil of their own order.
What security is there for stopping short at all in these wild conceits?
Allow that to be the true policy of the British system, then most of the faults with which that system stands charged will appear to be, not imperfections into which it has inadvertently fallen, but excellencies which it has studiously…
To avoid the perfections of extreme, all its several parts are so constituted as not alone to answer their own several ends, but also each to limit and control the others; insomuch that, take which of the principles you please, you will…
Men little think how immorally they act in rashly meddling with what they do not understand.
Their delusive good intention is no sort of excuse for their presumption.
They who truly mean well must be fearful of acting ill.
The British Constitution may have its advantages pointed out to wise and reflecting minds, but it is of too high an order of excellence to be adapted to those which are common.
It takes in too many views, it makes too many combinations, to be so much as comprehended by shallow and superficial understandings.
They will thank God they have a standard, which, in the most essential point of this great concern, will put them on a par with the most wise and knowing.
All this accumulation of calamity, the greatest that ever fell upon one man, has fallen upon his head, because he had left his virtues unguarded by caution,--because he was not taught, that, where power is concerned, he who will confer…
I know well that there is a cant language current, about the difference between an exclusion from employments, even to the most rigorous extent, and an exclusion from the natural benefits arising from a man's own industry.
The laws against foreign education are clearly the very worst part of the old code.
But a Catholic parish priest learns little for his peculiar purpose and duty in a Protestant college.
A plebeian oligarchy is a monster; and no people, not absolutely domestic or predial slaves, will long endure it.
Toleration, being a part of moral and political prudence, ought to be tender and large.
A man is certainly the most perfect Protestant who protests against the whole Christian religion.
It is putting things into the position of an ugly alternative, into which I hope in God they never will be put.
So, after some time, and after one of the most rigid conquests that we read of in history, the Normans softened into the English.
They who carried on this system looked to the irresistible force of Great Britain for their support in their acts of power.
Such a representation I think to be in many cases even better than the actual.
The standard of qualification in both cases may be so low, or not so judiciously chosen, as in some degree to frustrate the end.
This declaration of a new species of government, on new principles, (such it professes itself to be,) is a real crisis in the politics of Europe.
Politicians like Edmund Burke
