Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund BurkeBurke, Edmund
Philosophy
Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke
Burke, Edmund
Burke, Edmund, 1729-1797; Essays; Political science; Speeches, addresses, etc.
As to the wealth which the colonies have drawn from the sea by their
fisheries, you had all that matter fully opened at your bar. You surely
thought those acquisitions of value, for they seemed even to excite your
envy; and yet the spirit by which that enterprising employment has been
exercised ought rather, in my opinion, to have raised your esteem and
admiration. And pray, Sir, what in the world is equal to it! Pass by the
other parts, and look at the manner in which the people of New England
have of late carried on the whale fishery. Whilst we follow them among
the tumbling mountains of ice, and behold them penetrating into the
deepest frozen recesses of Hudson's Bay and Davis's Straits, whilst we
are looking for them beneath the arctic circle, we hear that they have
pierced into the opposite region of polar cold, that they are at the
antipodes, and engaged under the frozen serpent of the south. Falkland
Island, which seemed too remote and romantic an object for the grasp of
national ambition, is but a stage and resting-place in the progress of
their victorious industry. Nor is the equinoctial heat more discouraging
to them, than the accumulated winter of both the poles. We know that
whilst some of them draw the line and strike the harpoon on the coast of
Africa, others run the longitude, and pursue their gigantic game along
the coast of Brazil. No sea but what is vexed by their fisheries. No
climate that is not witness to their toils. Neither the perseverance of
Holland, nor the activity of France, nor the dexterous and firm sagacity
of English enterprise, ever carried this most perilous mode of hard
industry to the extent to which it has been pushed by this recent
people; a people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not
yet hardened into the bone of manhood.
PREPARATION FOR PARLIAMENT.
When I first devoted myself to the public service, I considered how
I should render myself fit for it; and this I did by endeavouring to
discover what it was that gave this country the rank it holds in the
world. I found that our prosperity and dignity arose principally, if not
solely, from two sources;--our constitution and commerce. Both these I
have spared no study to understand, and no endeavour to support.
The distinguishing part of our constitution is its liberty. To preserve
that liberty inviolate, seems the particular duty and proper trust of
a member of the House of Commons. But the liberty, the only liberty I
mean, is a liberty connected with order; that not only exists along with
order and virtue, but which cannot exist at all without them. It inheres
in good and steady government, as in its substance and vital principle.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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