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
Observe, on these principles, the difference between the procedure of
the Parliament and the Dissenters towards the people in question. One
employs courtship, the other force. The Dissenters offer bribes, the
Parliament nothing but the _front négatif_ of a stern and forbidding
authority. A man may be very wrong in his ideas of what is good for
him. But no man affronts me, nor can therefore justify my affronting
him, by offering to make me as happy as himself, according to his own
ideas of happiness. This the Dissenters do to the Catholics. You are on
the different extremes. The Dissenters offer, with regard to
constitutional rights and civil advantages of all sorts, _everything_;
you refuse _everything_. With them, there is boundless, though not very
assured hope; with you, a very sure and very unqualified despair. The
terms of alliance from the Dissenters offer a representation of the
commons, chosen out of the people by the head. This is absurdly and
dangerously large, in my opinion; and that scheme of election is known
to have been at all times perfectly odious to me. But I cannot think it
right of course to punish the Irish Roman Catholics by an universal
exclusion, because others, whom you would not punish at all, propose an
universal admission. I cannot dissemble to myself, that, in this very
kingdom, many persons who are not in the situation of the Irish
Catholics, but who, on the contrary, enjoy the full benefit of the
Constitution as it stands, and some of whom, from the effect of their
fortunes, enjoy it in a large measure, had some years ago associated to
procure great and undefined changes (they considered them as reforms) in
the popular part of the Constitution. Our friend, the late Mr. Flood,
(no slight man,) proposed in his place, and in my hearing, a
representation not much less extensive than this, for England,--in which
every house was to be inhabited by a voter, _in addition_ to all the
actual votes by other titles (some of the corporate) which we know do
not require a house or a shed. Can I forget that a person of the very
highest rank, of very large fortune, and of the first class of ability,
brought a bill into the House of Lords, in the head-quarters of
aristocracy, containing identically the same project for the supposed
adoption of which by a club or two it is thought right to extinguish all
hopes in the Roman Catholics of Ireland? I cannot say it was very
eagerly embraced or very warmly pursued. But the Lords neither did
disavow the bill, nor treat it with any disregard, nor express any sort
of disapprobation of its noble author, who has never lost, with king or
people, the least degree of the respect and consideration which so
justly belongs to him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account