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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He may resort to other principles and to other maxims; but this country will force him to be tried by its laws.
All the relations of life are at once dissolved.
Hastings, as a British governor, ought to govern on British principles, not by British forms,--God forbid!--for if ever there was a case in which the letter kills and the spirit gives life, it would be an attempt to introduce British forms…
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…
This I contend for not in the technical forms of it, but I contend for it in the substance.
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.
But I trust and hope your Lordships will not judge by laws and institutions which you do not know, against those laws and institutions which you do know, and under whose power and authority Mr.
Such another example of boldness and contrivance I believe the world cannot furnish.
And as this plea is boldly avowed and maintained, and as, no doubt, all his conduct was perfectly correspondent to these principles, the principles and the conduct must be tried together.
So, after some time, and after one of the most rigid conquests that we read of in history, the Normans softened into the English.
Those rights, and none other, I have been the involuntary instrument of enforcing.
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 constant necessity of similar exertions would increase at once their energy and extent; so that rebellion itself is the parent and promoter of despotism.
He claims glory and renown from that by which every other person since the beginning of time has been dishonored and disgraced.
I knew, that, from the history of Asia, and from the very nature of mankind, the subjects of a despotic empire are always vigilant for the moment to rebel, and the sovereign is ever jealous of rebellious intentions.
It is putting things into the position of an ugly alternative, into which I hope in God they never will be put.
They knew the contrary to be true; and they had taken good care that the laws should be well seconded by the manners.
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…
And if he violates the most solemn engagements, if he oppresses, extorts, and robs, if he imprisons, confiscates, banishes at his sole will and pleasure, when we accuse him for his ill-treatment of the people committed to him as a sacred…
He treats the official and regular Directors with just contempt, as a parcel of mean, mechanical book-keepers.
Perhaps you will imagine that the man who avows these principles of arbitrary government, and pleads them as the justification of acts which nothing else can justify, is of opinion that they are on the whole good for the people over whom…
My Lords, I will venture to say, there is no man but owes something to his character.
But nothing is more false than that despotism is the constitution of any country in Asia that we are acquainted with.
A man is certainly the most perfect Protestant who protests against the whole Christian religion.
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