The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 04 (of 12)Burke, Edmund
Philosophy
The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 04 (of 12)
Burke, Edmund
Great Britain -- Politics and government -- 1760-1820; Political science -- Early works to 1800
The true revolution to you, that which most intrinsically and
substantially resembled the English Revolution of 1688, was the Irish
Revolution of 1782. The Irish Parliament of 1782 bore little resemblance
to that which sat in that kingdom after the period of the first of these
revolutions. It bore a much nearer resemblance to that which sat under
King James. The change of the Parliament in 1782 from the character of
the Parliament which, as a token of its indignation, had burned all the
journals indiscriminately of the former Parliament in the
Council-Chamber, was very visible. The address of King William's
Parliament, the Parliament which assembled after the Revolution, amongst
other causes of complaint (many of them sufficiently just) complains of
the repeal by their predecessors of Poynings's law,--no absolute idol
with the Parliament of 1782.
Great Britain, finding the Anglo-Irish highly animated with a spirit
which had indeed shown itself before, though with little energy and many
interruptions, and therefore suffered a multitude of uniform precedents
to be established against it, acted, in my opinion, with the greatest
temperance and wisdom. She saw that the disposition of the _leading
part_ of the nation would not permit them to act any longer the part of
a _garrison_. She saw that true policy did not require that they ever
should have appeared in that character; or if it had done so formerly,
the reasons had now ceased to operate. She saw that the Irish of her
race were resolved to build their Constitution and their politics upon
another bottom. With those things under her view, she instantly complied
with the whole of your demands, without any reservation whatsoever. She
surrendered that boundless superiority, for the preservation of which,
and the acquisition, she had supported the English colonies in Ireland
for so long a time, and at so vast an expense (according to the standard
of those ages) of her blood and treasure.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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