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.
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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Two sorts of people inhabit the same country, as totally distinct from each other, in characters, lives, opinions, prejudices, and manners, as the inhabitants of countries most remote from each other.
All the relations of life are at once dissolved.
That bond which is one of the chief instruments of society, and which, supporting the individual, connects the species, can have no existence with them: I mean the convivial bond.
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…
It imposes upon us a stricter duty to guard with a firm and powerful vigilance those whose principles of conscience weaken their principles of self-defence.
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.
We must not think to force them into the narrow circle of our ideas; we must extend ours to take in their system of opinions and rites, and the necessities which result from both: all change on their part is absolutely impracticable.
Such another example of boldness and contrivance I believe the world cannot furnish.
We know what the empire of opinion is in human nature.
So, after some time, and after one of the most rigid conquests that we read of in history, the Normans softened into the English.
It is, however, the strongest principle in the composition of the frame of the human mind; and more of the happiness and unhappiness of mankind resides in that inward principle than in all external circumstances put together.
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!
He is precipitated from the proudest elevation of respect and honor to a bottomless abyss of contempt,--from glory to infamy,--from purity to pollution,--from sanctity to profanation.
He claims glory and renown from that by which every other person since the beginning of time has been dishonored and disgraced.
To speak to an Indian of his caste is to speak to him of his all.
It is putting things into the position of an ugly alternative, into which I hope in God they never will be put.
This, amongst a thousand other considerations, speaks to us in very authoritative language with what care and circumspection we ought to handle people so delicate.
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…
With all the faults of their nature and errors of their institutions, their institutions, which act so powerfully on their natures, have two material characteristics which entitle them to respect: first, great force and stability; and…
He treats the official and regular Directors with just contempt, as a parcel of mean, mechanical book-keepers.
They have stood firm on their ancient base; they have cast their roots deep in their native soil,--perhaps because they have never spread them anywhere else than in their native soil.
My Lords, I will venture to say, there is no man but owes something to his character.
This alone furnishes full proof that there must be some powerful influence resulting from them beyond all our little fashionable theories upon such subjects.
A man is certainly the most perfect Protestant who protests against the whole Christian religion.
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