The Works and Correspondence of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Volume 3

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F. & J. Rivington, 1852 - Great Britain

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Page 250 - ... death, show itself equal to the whole of that commerce which now attracts the envy of the world. Whatever England has been growing to by a progressive increase of improvement brought in by varieties of people, by succession of civilizing conquests, and civilizing settlements, in a series of seventeen hundred years, you shall see as much added to her by America in the course of a single life...
Page 257 - The last cause of this disobedient spirit in the colonies is hardly less powerful than the rest, as it is not merely moral, but laid deep in the natural constitution of things. Three thousand miles of ocean lie between you and them. No contrivance can prevent the effect of this distance, in weakening government. Seas roll, and months pass, between the order and the execution : and the want of a speedy explanation of a single point, is enough to defeat a whole system.
Page 254 - House of Commons, as an immediate representative of the people, whether the old records had delivered this oracle or not. They took infinite pains to inculcate, as a fundamental principle, that in all monarchies the people must in effect themselves, mediately or immediately, possess the power of granting their own money, or no shadow of liberty could subsist.
Page 291 - Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom ; and a great empire and little minds go ill together.
Page 266 - The question with me is, not whether you have a right to render your people miserable ; but whether it is not your interest to make them happy.
Page 293 - That it may be proper to repeal an act, made in the seventh year of the reign of his present Majesty, intituled, An act for granting certain duties in the British Colonies and Plantations in America...
Page 266 - ... miserable, but whether it is not your interest to make them happy. It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do, but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do. Is a politic act the worse for being a generous one? Is no concession proper but that which is made from your want of right to keep what you grant ? Or does it lessen the grace or dignity of relaxing in the exercise of an odious claim, because you have your evidence-room full of titles, and your magazines stuffed with arms...
Page 512 - This is the road that all heroes have trod before him. He is traduced and abused- for his supposed motives. He will remember, that obloquy is a necessary ingredient in the composition of all true glory : he will remember, that it was not only in the Roman customs, but it is in the nature and constitution of things, that calumny and abuse are essential parts of triumph.
Page 417 - Was I an Irishman on that day, that I boldly withstood our pride ? or on the day that I hung down my head, and wept in shame and silence over the humiliation of Great Britain ? I became unpopular in England for the one, and in Ireland for the other. What then ? What obligation lay on me to be popular ? I was bound to serve both kingdoms. To be pleased with my service was their affair, not mine.
Page 322 - Because extremes, as we all know, in every point which relates either to our duties or satisfactions in life, are destructive both to virtue and enjoyment. Liberty too must be limited in order to be possessed. The degree of restraint it is impossible in any case to settle precisely. But it ought to be the constant aim of every wise public counsel, to find out by cautious experiments, and rational, cool endeavors, with how little, not how much of this restraint, the community can subsist. For liberty...

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