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.
On this scheme of things, a king is but a man, a queen is but a woman;
a woman is but an animal,--and an animal not of the highest order. All
homage paid to the sex in general as such, and without distinct views,
is to be regarded as romance and folly. Regicide, and parricide, and
sacrilege are but fictions of superstition, corrupting jurisprudence
by destroying its simplicity. The murder of a king, or a queen, or a
bishop, or a father, are only common homicide; and if the people are by
any chance, or in any way, gainers by it, a sort of homicide much
the most pardonable, and into which we ought not to make too severe a
scrutiny.
On the scheme of this barbarous philosophy, which is the offspring of
cold hearts and muddy understandings, and which is as void of solid
wisdom as it is destitute of all taste and elegance, laws are to be
supported only by their own terrors, and by the concern which each
individual may find in them from his own private speculations, or can
spare to them from his own private interests. In the groves of THEIR
academy, at the end of every vista, you see nothing but the gallows.
Nothing is left which engages the affections on the part of the
commonwealth. On the principles of this mechanic philosophy, our
institutions can never be embodied, if I may use the expression,
in persons, so as to create in us love, veneration, admiration, or
attachment. But that sort of reason which banishes the affections is
incapable of filling their place. These public affections, combined
with manners, are required sometimes as supplements, sometimes as
correctives, always as aids to law. The precept given by a wise man, as
well as a great critic, for the construction of poems, is equally true
as to states:--Non satis est pulchra esse poemata, dulcia sunto. There
ought to be a system of manners in every nation which a well-formed mind
would be disposed to relish. To make us love our country, our country
ought to be lovely.
SACREDNESS OF MORAL INSTINCTS.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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