What in civil society is a ground of action in politic society is a ground of war.
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
But the exercise of that competent jurisdiction is a matter of moral prudence.
As suits in civil society, so war in the political, must ever be a matter of great deliberation.
Whatever his understanding adopted as truth, made its way to his heart, and sank deep into it; and his ardent and generous feelings seized with promptitude every occasion of applying it to mankind.
Where shall we find recorded exertions of active benevolence at once so numerous, so varied, and so important, made by one man?
Whether I have acted my part in it well or ill, posterity will judge with more candour than I, or than the present age, with our present passions, can possibly pretend to.
For my part, I quit it without a sigh, and submit to the sovereign order without murmuring.
Among those, the redress of wrongs, and the protection of weakness from the oppression of power, were most conspicuous.
For then the evil is not accidental, but settled.
You are but just entering into the world; I am going out of it.
The nearer we approach to the goal of life, the better we begin to understand the true value of our existence, and the real weight of our opinions.
We set out much in love with both: but we leave much behind us as we advance.
We first throw away the tales along with the rattles of our nurses; those of the priest keep their hold a little longer; those of our governors the longest of all.
But the passions which prop these opinions are withdrawn one after another; and the cool light of reason, at the setting of our life, shows us what a false splendour played upon these objects during our more sanguine seasons.
If any inquiry thus carefully conducted should fail at last of discovering the truth, it may answer an end perhaps as useful, in discovering to us the weakness of our own understanding.
If it does not make us knowing, it may make us modest.
If it does not preserve us from error, it may at least from the spirit of error; and may make us cautious of pronouncing with positiveness or with haste, when so much labour may end in so much uncertainty.
We must not attempt to fly, when we can scarcely pretend to creep.
In considering any complex matter, we ought to examine every distinct ingredient in the composition, one by one; and reduce everything to the utmost simplicity; since the condition of our nature binds us to a strict law and vary narrow…
We ought to compare our subject with things of a similar nature, and even with things of a contrary nature; for discoveries may be, and often are, made by the contrast, which would escape us on the single view.
The greater number of the comparisons we make, the more general and the more certain our knowledge is likely to prove, as built upon a more extensive and perfect induction.
True religion has, and must have, a large mixture of salutary fear; and false religions have generally nothing else but fear to support them.
Natural objects affect us, by the laws of that connexion which Providence has established between certain motions and configurations of bodies, and certain consequent feelings in our mind.
They had gloried (and some people in England had thought fit to take share in that glory) in making a Revolution, as if revolutions were good things in themselves.
All the horrors and all the crimes of the anarchy which led to their Revolution, which attend its progress, and which may virtually attend it in its establishment, pass for nothing with the lovers of revolutions.
Politicians like Edmund Burke
