The bonus book for the week asks this question: Did the American Revolution have to happen? Couldn’t England and the Thirteen Colonies have kissed and made up?
In Edmund Burke’s “Speech on Conciliation with America”, one of history’s greats proposes one of history’s great might-have-beens to Parliament and the hostile British government in 1775. None of them knew what was going on in America, six weeks’ ship travel away. His speech is quixotic, sensible, insightful, and bizarre by turns, but always worth listening to. Boy, could they talk back then.
You can read the unabridged version of his speech either in Volume II of his complete works or in this textbook version with extensive introduction and notes. There are also a wide variety of other annotated Burke sources available on the net, most notably at the Library of Economics and Liberty, which helped me add to the notes in Burke’s Complete Works. I didn’t go to Eton, so I’d like to know where the Latin tags come from and what they mean, thank you.
Don’t take this book’s presence here as arguing that conservatism = Catholicism, or anything of the sort. In fact, although Burke is definitely a father of conservative thought, he doesn’t fit comfortably into any sort of political division, either of his time or our own. This was deplored as a fault by some, but not by me. Burke stood always for what he saw as right and just; it was politics that shifted around him. But he was a child of his time; and some of what he saw as right, we’re bound to recognize as wrong.
Btw, Edmund Burke was the product of a mixed marriage. He was raised Anglican, like his father, because only thus could he go to university and pursue a public career under the Irish Penal Laws. His sister was raised Catholic, like his mother.
DOWNLOAD LINKS:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Notes on the speech
Greetings, Maureen. I hope this message finds things going well with you. Regarding the late Mr. Edmund Burke, I have been searching for months to find a speech cited in Mr. Burke’s writings. To be specific, on EWTN’s Sunday Night Live, many months ago – I think this was in the spring of this year – , Fr. Groeschel mentioned this speech, which was a plea by a British Member of Parlaiment, for the revocation of the persecutorial penal laws imposed upon Irish Catholics. Father remarked that his high school class was required his class to memorize the full text of this speech. This oration recounted how, in spite of every means of persecution imposed upon Irish Catholics, the Catholic Church in Ireland continued to grow. Father’s comments certaily sparked my concern for the value of this oration as a historical testimony to the faithfulness of Irish Catholics, inasmuch as I am a convert to Catholicism, and am interested in learning more about the history of our Church. This same oration’s relevance to the history of law, and of human rights also spaked my interest. I hoped the text of this speech might be available on the internet. After many months, I finally found the text of this speech, here: _The Soul of Ireland_, by William J. Lockington, SJ, 1920 . HINT: Maybe this speech would make an interesting audio recording –Jeff
BTW, have a Happy Thanksgiving, Maureen –Jeff.