The Bond of Liberty
Edmund Burke told fellow MPs that the only way to unite the peoples of the Empire was for London to set them an enviable example.
1775
Edmund Burke told fellow MPs that the only way to unite the peoples of the Empire was for London to set them an enviable example.
1775
Edmund Burke reminded the House of Commons that her enviable international influence did not depend on government bureacracy or complex trade deals or military might. It arose from Britain’s ‘unique selling point’, a love of liberty her colonies could find nowhere else.
AS long as you have the wisdom to keep the sovereign authority of this country as the sanctuary of liberty, the sacred temple consecrated to our common faith, wherever the chosen race and sons of England worship freedom, they will turn their faces towards you. The more they multiply, the more friends you will have; the more ardently they love liberty, the more perfect will be their obedience.
Slavery they can have anywhere. It is a weed that grows in every soil.* They may have it from Spain, they may have it from Prussia. But, until you become lost to all feeling of your true interest and your natural dignity, freedom they can have from none but you. It is the spirit of the English constitution, which, infused through the mighty mass, pervades, feeds, unites, invigorates, vivifies every part of the empire, even down to the minutest member.
This phrase and indeed the substance of Burke’s argument was recalled in his final speech to the Commons by Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin in 1937. The speech can be read and heard online at The British Library.
1. What is the author aiming to achieve in writing this?
2. Note any words, devices or turns of phrase that strike you. How do they help the author communicate his ideas more effectively?
3. What impression does this passage make on you? How might you put that impression into words?
Based on The English Critic (1939) by NL Clay, drawing on The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910, by J. E. Spingarn, Professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University, USA.
Express the ideas below in a single sentence, using different words as much as possible. Do not be satisfied with the first answer you think of; think of several, and choose the best.
The American colonies declared independence in 1776. Edmund Burke blamed British policy.