It gives me the most sensible concern to find that my vote on the resolutions relative to the trade of Ireland has not been fortunate enough to meet with your approbation.
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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There is a law of neighborhood which does not leave a man perfect master on his own ground.
Those which are rather conclusions of legal reason than matters of statutable provision belong to universal equity, and are universally applicable.
It has ever been the method of public jurists to draw a great part of the analogies on which they form the law of nations from the principles of law which prevail in civil community.
Yet she submitted patiently to the evils she suffered from an attempt to subdue to your obedience countries whose very commerce was not open to her.
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.
All the relations of life are at once dissolved.
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…
If honesty be true policy with regard to the transient interest of individuals, it is much more certainly so with regard to the permanent interests of communities.
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.
Such another example of boldness and contrivance I believe the world cannot furnish.
So, after some time, and after one of the most rigid conquests that we read of in history, the Normans softened into the English.
Trade is not a limited thing: as if the objects of mutual demand and consumption could not stretch beyond the bounds of our jealousies.
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 claims glory and renown from that by which every other person since the beginning of time has been dishonored and disgraced.
It is putting things into the position of an ugly alternative, into which I hope in God they never will be put.
It is nothing to an oppressed people, to say that in part they are protected at our charge.
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…
He treats the official and regular Directors with just contempt, as a parcel of mean, mechanical book-keepers.
My Lords, I will venture to say, there is no man but owes something to his character.
This fundamental nature of protection does not belong to free, but to all governments, and is as valid in Turkey as in Great Britain.
A man is certainly the most perfect Protestant who protests against the whole Christian religion.
Now, my Lords, every office of trust, in its very nature, forbids the receipt of bribes.
We know not how this assertion is to be made good, unless the most daring and flagrant prostitution in every branch be deemed an honor to his administration.
Toleration, being a part of moral and political prudence, ought to be tender and large.
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