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.
Let government protect and encourage industry, secure property, repress
violence, and discountenance fraud, it is all that they have to do. In
other respects, the less they meddle in these affairs the better; the
rest is in the hands of our Master and theirs. We are in a constitution
of things wherein--"Modo sol nimius, modo corripit imber." But I will
push this matter no further. As I have said a good deal upon it
at various times during my public service, and have lately written
something on it which may yet see the light, I shall content myself now
with observing, that the vigorous and laborious class of life has lately
got, from the bon ton of the humanity of this day, the name of the
"labouring poor." We have heard many plans for the relief of the
"labouring poor." This puling jargon is not as innocent as it is
foolish. In meddling with great affairs, weakness is never innoxious.
Hitherto the name of poor (in the sense in which it is used to excite
compassion) has not been used for those who can, but for those who
cannot, labour--for the sick and infirm, for orphan infancy, for
languishing and decrepit age: but when we affect to pity, as poor, those
who must labour, or the world cannot exist, we are trifling with the
condition of mankind. It is the common doom of man that he must eat his
bread by the sweat of his brow, that is, by the sweat of his body, or
the sweat of his mind. If this toil was inflicted as a curse, it is, as
might be expected from the curses of the Father of all blessings--it
is tempered with many alleviations, many comforts. Every attempt to fly
from it, and to refuse the very terms of our existence, becomes much
more truly a curse; and heavier pains and penalties fall upon those
who would elude the tasks which are put upon them by the great
Master Workman of the world, who, in his dealings with his creatures,
sympathizes with their weakness, and speaking of a creation wrought by
mere will out of nothing, speaks of six days of LABOUR and one of REST.
I do not call a healthy young man, cheerful in his mind, and vigorous
in his arms, I cannot call such a man POOR; I cannot pity my kind as
a kind, merely because they are men. This affected pity only tends
to dissatisfy them with their condition, and to teach them to seek
resources where no resources are to be found, in something else than
their own industry, and frugality, and sobriety. Whatever may be the
intention (which, because I do not know, I cannot dispute) of those who
would discontent mankind by this strange pity, they act towards us, in
the consequences, as if they were our worst enemies.
STATE CONSECRATED BY THE CHURCH.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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