The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 02 (of 12)Burke, Edmund
Philosophy
The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 02 (of 12)
Burke, Edmund
Great Britain -- Politics and government -- 1760-1820; Political science -- Early works to 1800
But, Sir, in wishing to put an end to pernicious experiments, I do not
mean to preclude the fullest inquiry. Far from it. Far from deciding on
a sudden or partial view, I would patiently go round and round the
subject, and survey it minutely in every possible aspect. Sir, if I were
capable of engaging you to an equal attention, I would state, that, as
far as I am capable of discerning, there are but three ways of
proceeding relative to this stubborn spirit which prevails in your
colonies and disturbs your government. These are,--to change that
spirit, as inconvenient, by removing the causes,--to prosecute it, as
criminal,--or to comply with it, as necessary. I would not be guilty of
an imperfect enumeration; I can think of but these three. Another has,
indeed, been started,--that of giving up the colonies; but it met so
slight a reception that I do not think myself obliged to dwell a great
while upon it. It is nothing but a little sally of anger, like the
frowardness of peevish children, who, when they cannot get all they
would have, are resolved to take nothing.
The first of these plans--to change the spirit, as inconvenient, by
removing the causes--I think is the most like a systematic proceeding.
It is radical in its principle; but it is attended with great
difficulties: some of them little short, as I conceive, of
impossibilities. This will appear by examining into the plans which have
been proposed.
As the growing population of the colonies is evidently one cause of
their resistance, it was last session mentioned in both Houses, by men
of weight, and received not without applause, that, in order to check
this evil, it would be proper for the crown to make no further grants of
land. But to this scheme there are two objections. The first, that there
is already so much unsettled land in private hands as to afford room for
an immense future population, although the crown not only withheld its
grants, but annihilated its soil. If this be the case, then the only
effect of this avarice of desolation, this hoarding of a royal
wilderness, would be to raise the value of the possessions in the hands
of the great private monopolists, without any adequate check to the
growing and alarming mischief of population.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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