What an escape we have had, that we and our allies were not the conquerors!
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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To a free people this would be a matter of alarm; but this physician of October has in his shop all sorts of salves for all sorts of sores.
But to descend from the author's generalities a little nearer to meaning, the security given to liberty is this,--"that governments will have learned not to precipitate themselves into embarrassments by speculative wars.
But is it permitted to ask what security it affords to the liberty of the subject, that the prince is pacific or frugal?
For which of her vices did they put to death the mildest of all human creatures, the Duchess of Biron?
What were the crimes of those crowds of matrons and virgins of condition, whom they mas sacred, with their juries of blood, in prisons and on scaffolds?
What were the enormities of the infant king, whom they caused, by lingering tortures, to perish in their dungeon, and whom if at last they dispatched by poison, it was in that detestable crime the only act of mercy they have ever shown?
The priests were punished, after they had been robbed of their all, not for their vices, but for their virtues and their piety, which made them an honor to their sacred profession, and to that nature of which we ought to be proud, since…
The conduct of the Regicide faction is perfectly systematic in every particular, and it appears absurd only as it is strange and uncouth, not as it has an application to the ends and objects of their policy.
When by insult after insult they have rendered the character of sovereigns vile in the eyes of their subjects, they know there is but one step more to their utter destruction.
He was a tyrant; they were his satellites and his hangmen.
But, alas! the short date of human elevation!
But this great matter of political deliberation cannot be put out of our thoughts by his silence.
Our vices are the same as theirs, neither more nor less.
But it is not annihilated by their silence, nor by our indifference.
A French ambassador, at the head of a French party, is an evil which we have never experienced.
But, before this time, our liberty has never been corrupted.
Weather-beaten ships have been brought safe to port by the spirit and alertness of the crew.
Nero wished the Roman people had but one neck.
When thus the helm of justice is abandoned, an universal abandonment of all other posts will succeed.
We live at a time when men are not repaid in fame for what they sacrifice in interest or repose.
The greatest number have a sort of an heavy, lumpish acquiescence in government, without much respect or esteem for those that compose it.
They decline a general engagement,--prudently enough, if their object had been to make the war attend upon a treaty of good terms of subjection; but when they look further, this will not do.
Experience had but too fully instructed us in the possibility of the reduction of a free people to slavery by foreign mercenary armies.
For mercy, as we conceive, consists, not in the weakness of the means, but in the benignity of the ends.
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