Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund BurkeBurke, Edmund
Philosophy
Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke
Burke, Edmund
Burke, Edmund, 1729-1797; Essays; Political science; Speeches, addresses, etc.
deliverer, the metaphysic knight of the sorrowful countenance. When I
see the spirit of liberty in action, I see a strong principle at work;
and this, for a while, is all I can possibly know of it. The wild GAS,
the fixed air, is plainly broke loose: but we ought to suspend our
judgment until the first effervescence is a little subsided, till the
liquor is cleared, and until we see something deeper than the agitation
of a troubled and frothy surface. I must be tolerably sure, before I
venture publicly to congratulate men upon a blessing, that they have
really received one. Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver;
and adulation is not of more service to the people than to kings.
I should therefore suspend my congratulations on the new liberty of
France, until I was informed how it had been combined with government;
with public force; with the discipline and obedience of armies; with the
collection of an effective and well-distributed revenue; with morality
and religion; with solidity and property; with peace and order; with
civil and social manners. All these (in their way) are good things too;
and, without them, liberty is not a benefit whilst it lasts, and is not
likely to continue long. The effect of liberty to individuals, is, that
they may do what they please: we ought to see what it will please them
to do before we risk congratulations, which may be soon turned into
complaints. Prudence would dictate this in the case of separate,
insulated, private men; but liberty, when men act in bodies, is POWER.
Considerate people, before they declare themselves, will observe the
use which is made of POWER; and particularly of so trying a thing as NEW
power in NEW persons, of whose principles, tempers, and dispositions,
they have little or no experience, and in situations where those who
appear the most stirring in the scene may possibly not be the real
movers.
POLITICS AND THE PULPIT.
Supposing, however, that something like moderation were visible in this
political sermon; yet politics and the pulpit are terms that have little
agreement. No sound ought to be heard in the church but the healing
voice of Christian charity. The cause of civil liberty and civil
government gains as little as that of religion by this confusion of
duties. Those who quit their proper character to assume what does
not belong to them, are, for the greater part, ignorant both of
the character they leave, and of the character they assume. Wholly
unacquainted with the world in which they are so fond of meddling, and
inexperienced in all its affairs, on which they pronounce with so much
confidence, they have nothing of politics but the passions they excite.
Surely the church is a place where one day's truce ought to be allowed
to the dissensions and animosities of mankind.
IDEA OF FRENCH REVOLUTION.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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