The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 06 (of 12)Burke, Edmund
Philosophy
The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 06 (of 12)
Burke, Edmund
Great Britain -- Politics and government -- 1760-1820; Political science -- Early works to 1800
You have made, as you naturally do, a very able analysis of powers, and
have separated, as the things are separable, civil from political
powers. You start, too, a question, whether the civil can be secured
without some share in the political. For my part, as abstract questions,
I should find some difficulty in an attempt to resolve them. But as
applied to the state of Ireland, to the form of our commonwealth, to the
parties that divide us, and to the dispositions of the leading men in
those parties, I cannot hesitate to lay before you my opinion, that,
whilst any kind of discouragements and disqualifications remain on the
Catholics, an handle will be made by a factious power utterly to defeat
the benefits of any civil rights they may apparently possess. I need not
go to very remote times for my examples. It was within the course of
about a twelvemonth, that, after Parliament had been led into a step
quite unparalleled in its records, after they had resisted all
concession, and even hearing, with an obstinacy equal to anything that
could have actuated a party domination in the second or eighth of Queen
Anne, after the strange adventure of the Grand Juries, and after
Parliament had listened to the sovereign pleading for the emancipation
of his subjects,--it was after all this, that such a grudging and
discontent was expressed as must justly have alarmed, as it did
extremely alarm, the whole of the Catholic body: and I remember but one
period in my whole life (I mean the savage period between 1781 and 1767)
in which they have been more harshly or contumeliously treated than
since the last partial enlargement. And thus I am convinced it will be,
by paroxysms, as long as any stigma remains on them, and whilst they are
considered as no better than half citizens. If they are kept such for
any length of time, they will be made whole Jacobins. Against this grand
and dreadful evil of our time (I do not love to cheat myself or others)
I do not know any solid security whatsoever; but I am quite certain that
what will come nearest to it is to interest as many as you can in the
present order of things, religiously, civilly, politically, by all the
ties and principles by which mankind are held. This is like to be
effectual policy: I am sure it is honorable policy: and it is better to
fail, if fail we must, in the paths of direct and manly than of low and
crooked wisdom.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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