We have not chosen to bring before you a poor, puny, trembling delinquent, misled, perhaps, by those who ought to have taught him better, but who have afterwards oppressed him by their power, as they had first corrupted him by their…
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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Its foundation is laid in Regicide, in Jacobinism, and in Atheism; and it has joined to those principles a body of systematic manners which secures their operation.
We have not brought before you an obscure offender, who, when his insignificance and weakness are weighed against the power of the prosecution, gives even to public justice something of the appearance of oppression: no, my Lords, we have…
All the relations of life are at once dissolved.
We have brought before you such a person, that, if you strike at him with the firm and decided arm of justice, you will not have need of a great many more examples.
Instead of the religion and the law by which they were in a great politic communion with the Christian world, they have constructed their republic on three bases, all fundamentally opposite to those on which the communities of Europe are…
But your Lordships will maintain, what we assert and claim as the right of the subjects of Great Britain, that you are not bound by any rules of evidence, or any other rules whatever, except those of natural, immutable, and substantial…
On this head the parent law is express and clear, and has made many wise provisions, which, without destroying, regulate and restrain the right of ownership by the right of vicinage.
If they should make such a request, they would aim at overturning the very principles of that justice to which they resort; they would give the nation an evil example that would rebound back on themselves, and bring destruction upon their…
Such another example of boldness and contrivance I believe the world cannot furnish.
For, situated as this kingdom is, an object, thank God, of envy to the rest of the nations, its conduct in that high and elevated situation will undoubtedly be scrutinized with a severity as great as its power is invidious.
So, after some time, and after one of the most rigid conquests that we read of in history, the Normans softened into the English.
No direct false judgment is apprehended from the tribunals of this country; but it is feared that partiality may lurk and nestle in the abuse of our forms of proceeding.
God forbid that prudence, the first of all the virtues, as well as the supreme director of them all, should ever be employed in the service of any of the vices!
The abusers of power may have a chance to cover themselves by those fences and intrenchments which were made to secure the liberties of the people against men of that very description.
He claims glory and renown from that by which every other person since the beginning of time has been dishonored and disgraced.
Where two motives, neither of them perfectly justifiable, may be assigned, the worst has the chance of being preferred.
It is putting things into the position of an ugly alternative, into which I hope in God they never will be put.
You will not suffer your proceedings to be squared by any rules but by their necessities, and by that law of a common nature which cements them to us and us to them.
The tenderness of the executive power is the natural asylum of those upon whom the laws have declared war; and to complain that men are inclined to favor the means of their own safety is so absurd, that one forgets the injustice in the…
I hope on this occasion your Lordships will show that this nation never did give a power without annexing to it a proportionable degree of responsibility.
He treats the official and regular Directors with just contempt, as a parcel of mean, mechanical book-keepers.
The people of India, therefore, come in the name of the Commons of Great Britain, but in their own right, to the bar of this House, before the supreme royal justice of this kingdom, from whence originally all the powers under which they…
My Lords, I will venture to say, there is no man but owes something to his character.
A man is certainly the most perfect Protestant who protests against the whole Christian religion.
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