Question

In a famous speech to parliament, the british statesman edmund burke said what regarding a link between slavery and liberty for american colonists?

a. he argued that the colonists were sensitive to threats to their liberties because they were so familiar with slavery.
b. he said john locke's ideas about property rights meant colonists were justified in claiming that their liberty included slave ownership rights.
c. he stated that a threat to liberty anywhere is a threat to liberty everywhere, so american slavery threatened british freedom.
d. he said the colonists were hypocrites for claiming to be pro-liberty while they themselves owned slaves.
e. he praised liberty-loving pennsylvanians for organizing the world's first antislavery society.

Answer 1

Choice A is the answer you're seeking. Edmund Burke warned that the colonists faced threats to their liberty because they were so familiar with slavery.

Now, just because Burke was talking about liberties in that speech, don't think of him as someone always rallying for liberties and more liberties. Burke is famous as one of the leaders of the Conservative movement of the late 18th and early 19th century. When the French Revolution began (after the American Revolution), Burke wrote a hugely famous and influential book, "Reflections on the Revolution in France" (published in 1790). In that writing, Burke warned against the excesses of freedom that he predicted would occur in France because of its Revolution -- and many of his predictions came true.

Burke wanted liberties and freedoms to grow naturally, organically -- rather than by revolutionary upheavals.

Answer 2

The British statesman Edmund Burke argued that the colonists were sensitive to threats to their liberties because they were so familiar with slavery. Edmund Burke, born in 1730 and died in 1797, was an Irish statemen who serve in the United Kingdom parliament between 1766 and 1794 in the House of the Commons with the Whig Party. Nowadays he is considered the father of modern conservatism.