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
But it will be said, in that country some people are free. Why, this is
the very description of despotism. _Partial freedom is privilege and
prerogative, and not liberty._ Liberty, such as deserves the name, is
an honest, equitable, diffusive, and impartial principle. It is a great
and enlarged virtue, and not a sordid, selfish, and illiberal vice. It
is the portion of the mass of the citizens, and not the haughty license
of some potent individual or some predominant faction.
If anything ought to be despotic in a country, it is its government;
because there is no cause of constant operation to make its yoke
unequal. But the dominion of a party must continually, steadily, and by
its very essence, lean upon the prostrate description. A constitution
formed so as to enable a party to overrule its very government, and to
overpower the people too, answers the purposes neither of government nor
of freedom. It compels that power which ought, and often would be
disposed, _equally_ to protect the subjects, to fail in its trust, to
counteract its purposes, and to become no better than the instrument of
the wrongs of a faction. Some degree of influence must exist in all
governments. But a government which has no interest to please the body
of the people, and can neither support them nor with safety call for
their support, nor is of power to sway the domineering faction, can only
exist by corruption; and taught by that monopolizing party which usurps
the title and qualities of the public to consider the body of the people
as out of the constitution, they will consider those who are in it in
the light in which they choose to consider themselves. The whole
relation of government and of freedom will be a battle or a traffic.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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