Thoughts on the Present Discontents, and SpeechesBurke, Edmund
General
Thoughts on the Present Discontents, and Speeches
Burke, Edmund
Great Britain -- Politics and government -- 1760-1789
I believe the reader would wish to find no substance in a doctrine which
has a tendency to destroy all test of character as deduced from conduct.
He will therefore excuse my adding something more towards the further
clearing up a point which the great convenience of obscurity to
dishonesty has been able to cover with some degree of darkness and doubt.
In order to throw an odium on political connection, these politicians
suppose it a necessary incident to it that you are blindly to follow the
opinions of your party when in direct opposition to your own clear ideas,
a degree of servitude that no worthy man could bear the thought of
submitting to, and such as, I believe, no connections (except some Court
factions) ever could be so senselessly tyrannical as to impose. Men
thinking freely will, in particular instances, think differently. But
still, as the greater Part of the measures which arise in the course of
public business are related to, or dependent on, some great leading
general principles in Government, a man must be peculiarly unfortunate in
the choice of his political company if he does not agree with them at
least nine times in ten. If he does not concur in these general
principles upon which the party is founded, and which necessarily draw on
a concurrence in their application, he ought from the beginning to have
chosen some other, more conformable to his opinions. When the question
is in its nature doubtful, or not very material, the modesty which
becomes an individual, and (in spite of our Court moralists) that
partiality which becomes a well-chosen friendship, will frequently bring
on an acquiescence in the general sentiment. Thus the disagreement will
naturally be rare; it will be only enough to indulge freedom, without
violating concord or disturbing arrangement. And this is all that ever
was required for a character of the greatest uniformity and steadiness in
connection. How men can proceed without any connection at all is to me
utterly incomprehensible. Of what sort of materials must that man be
made, how must he be tempered and put together, who can sit whole years
in Parliament, with five hundred and fifty of his fellow-citizens, amidst
the storm of such tempestuous passions, in the sharp conflict of so many
wits, and tempers, and characters, in the agitation of such mighty
questions, in the discussion of such vast and ponderous interests,
without seeing any one sort of men, whose character, conduct, or
disposition would lead him to associate himself with them, to aid and be
aided, in any one system of public utility?
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