![]() ![]() They are a trust from Providence, for the abuse of which he is deeply answerable. These he does not derive from your pleasure-no, nor from the law and the Constitution. But his unbiased opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living. It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasures, his satisfactions, to theirs and, above all, ever, and in all cases, to prefer their interest to his own. Their wishes ought to have great weight with him their opinion high respect their business unremitted attention. That antidemagogic if not antidemocratic idea was best represented in his speech to the electors of Bristol, then the second-largest city in England, soon after his election in 1774: “Certainly, gentlemen, it ought to be the happiness and glory of a representative to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents. Burke is seen today as a conservative, a political appellation coined after his time, partly because he put individual decision making based on moral or philosophical standards ahead of following the opinion of the majority. ![]() In an age of revolution, Burke opposed radical practices but not revolutionary political theory he favored the abolition of slavery, attacked the exploitation of India in the trial of Warren Hastings, and was the foremost defender of the American colonists’ rights. Samuel Johnson of Edmund Burke, “but you must be convinced you had been standing with the greatest man you had ever seen.” The Dublin-born politician apparently carried with him an air of independence and integrity, which gave his well-reasoned speeches and epigrammatic phrases added authority. “You could not stand five minutes with that man beneath a shed while it rained,” wrote Dr. A nation is not governed which is perpetually to be conquered.” “The use of force alone is but temporary…. Edmund Burke Makes a Case for Conciliation with America
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