What is the famous speech by Edmund Burke?
The Tory administration of Lord North (1770-1782) tried to defeat the colonists’ rebellion by military force. British and American forces clashed in 1775 and in 1776 came the American Declaration of Independence. Burke was appalled by the Toryism of the celebrations in Britain of the defeat of the Americans at New York and Pennsylvania. He claimed the English national character was being changed by this authoritarianism. To Burke Britain was fighting “the American English” (“our English Brethren in the Colonies”), with a German-descended King employing “the hireling sword of German boors and vassals” to destroy the British colonists’ English liberties.
