The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 02 (of 12)
The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 02 (of 12)
In the early 1770s, the British Empire stood at the edge of an abyss. Edmund Burke saw it coming. This volume collects the speeches he delivered in Parliament as he argued, with extraordinary foresight, that America's colonies could not be governed through stubbornness and force. Here is Burke at his most urgent: defending the rights of colonists to be represented in decisions about their own taxation, warning that empire built on injustice cannot last, and pleading for a politics of reason over pride. These are not dry philosophical treatises. They are speeches aimed at members of Parliament who held America's future in their hands, and they crackle with the tension of a empire tearing itself apart. Burke's arguments about representation, the limits of coercion, and the dangers of political obstinance would prove devastatingly accurate within a decade. Yet this is not merely historical curiosity. The questions Burke raises about how empires govern, when to compromise, and what rights belong to the governed are the same questions that shape political life today.
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“To please universally was the object of his life; but to tax and to please, . However, he attempted it.””
— Edmund Burke
“He has said that the Americans are our children, and how can they revolt against their parent? He says, that, if they are not free in their present state, England is not free; because Manchester, and other considerable places, are not represented. So, then, because some towns in England are not represented, America is to have no representative at all. They are "our children"; but when children ask for bread, we are not to give a stone. Is it because the natural resistance of things, and the various mutations of time, hinders our government, or any scheme of government, from being any more than a sort of approximation to the right, is it therefore that the colonies are to recede from it infinitely? When this child of ours wishes to assimilate to its parent, and to reflect with a true filial resemblance the beauteous countenance of British liberty, are we to turn to them the shameful parts of our constitution? are we to give them our weakness for their strength, our opprobrium for their glory, and the slough of slavery, which we are not able to work off, to serve them for their freedom?””
— Edmund Burke
“But if, intemperately, unwisely, fatally, you sophisticate and poison the very source of government, by urging subtle deductions, and consequences odious to those you govern, from the unlimited and illimitable nature of supreme sovereignty, you will teach them by these means to call that sovereignty itself in question. When you drive him hard, the boar will surely turn upon the hunters. If that sovereignty and their freedom cannot be reconciled, which will they take? They will cast your sovereignty in your face. Nobody will be argued into slavery.””
— Edmund Burke
“Let us, Sir, embrace some system or other before we end this session. Do you mean to tax America, and to draw a productive revenue from thence? If you do, speak out: name, fix, ascertain this revenue; settle its quantity; define its objects; provide for its collection; and then fight, when you have something to fight for. If you murder, rob; if you kill, take possession; and do not appear in the character of madmen as well as assassins, violent, vindictive, bloody, and tyrannical, without an object. But may better counsels guide you!””
— Edmund Burke
“If you do not fall in with this motion, then secure something to fight for, consistent in theory and valuable in practice. If you must employ your strength, employ it to uphold you in some honorable right or some profitable wrong. If you are apprehensive that the concession recommended to you, though proper, should be a means of drawing on you further, but unreasonable claims,”
— Edmund Burke
“I beg pardon, Sir, if, when I speak of this and of other great men, I appear to digress in saying something of their characters. In this eventful history of the revolutions of America, the characters of such men are of much importance. Great men are the guideposts and landmarks in the state. The credit of such men at court or in the nation is the sole cause of all the public measures. ””
— Edmund Burke
“Sir, if reasons respecting simply your own commerce, which is your own convenience, were the sole grounds of the repeal of the five duties, why does Lord Hillsborough, in disclaiming in the name of the king and ministry their ever having had an intent to tax for revenue, mention it as the means "of reëstablishing the confidence and affection of the colonies?" ””
— Edmund Burke
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Burke, Edmund. The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 02 (of 12). Lex, lex-books.com/book/the-works-of-the-right-honourable-edmund-burke-vol-02-of-12-2a2a2f3f-49d4-487d-ae7b-7c72e672b05f.Burke, E. (n.d.). The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 02 (of 12). Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-works-of-the-right-honourable-edmund-burke-vol-02-of-12-2a2a2f3f-49d4-487d-ae7b-7c72e672b05fBurke, Edmund. The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 02 (of 12). Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-works-of-the-right-honourable-edmund-burke-vol-02-of-12-2a2a2f3f-49d4-487d-ae7b-7c72e672b05f.
