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.
like Ulysses in the unravelling point of the epic story, he would have
thrown off his patience and his rags together; and, stripped of unworthy
disguises, he would have stood forth in the form and in the attitude
of a hero. On that day it was thought he would have assumed the port of
Mars; that he would bid to be brought forth from their hideous kennel
(where his scrupulous tenderness had too long immured them) those
impatient dogs of war, whose fierce regards affright even the minister
of vengeance that feeds them; that he would let them loose, in famine,
fever, plagues, and death, upon a guilty race, to whose frame, and
to all whose habit, order, peace, religion, and virtue are alien and
abhorrent. It was expected that he would at last have thought of active
and effectual war; that he would no longer amuse the British lion in the
chase of mice and rats; that he would no longer employ the whole naval
power of Great Britain, once the terror of the world, to prey upon
the miserable remains of a peddling commerce, which the enemy did not
regard, and from which none could profit. It was expected that he
would have re-asserted the justice of his cause; that he would have
re-animated whatever remained to him of his allies, and endeavoured
to recover those whom their fears had led astray; that he would have
rekindled the martial ardour of his citizens; that he would have held
out to them the example of their ancestry, the assertor of Europe, and
the scourge of French ambition; that he would have reminded them of a
posterity, which, if this nefarious robbery under the fraudulent name
and false colour of a government, should in full power be seated in the
heart of Europe, must for ever be consigned to vice, impiety, barbarism,
and the most ignominious slavery of body and mind. In so holy a cause it
was presumed that he would (as in the beginning of the war he did)
have opened all the temples; and with prayer, with fasting, and with
supplication (better directed than to the grim Moloch of regicide in
France), have called upon us to raise that united cry which has so often
stormed heaven, and with a pious violence forced down blessings upon
a repentant people. It was hoped that when he had invoked upon his
endeavours the favourable regard of the Protector of the human race,
it would be seen that his menaces to the enemy, and his prayers to the
Almighty, were not followed, but accompanied, with correspondent action.
It was hoped that his shrilling trumpet should be heard, not to announce
a show, but to sound a charge.
LAW OF VICINITY.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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