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.
To a person who takes a view of the whole, the strength of Paris, thus
formed, will appear a system of general weakness. It is boasted that
the geometrical policy has been adopted, that all local ideas should be
sunk, and that the people should be no longer Gascons, Picards, Bretons,
Normans; but Frenchmen, with one country, one heart, and one Assembly.
But instead of being all Frenchmen, the greater likelihood is, that the
inhabitants of that region will shortly have no country. No man ever
was attached by a sense of pride, partiality, or real affection, to a
description of square measurements. He never will glory in belonging to
the Chequer No. 71, or to any other badge-ticket. We begin our public
affections in our families. No cold relation is a zealous citizen. We
pass on to our neighbourhoods, and our habitual provincial connections.
These are inns and resting-places. Such divisions of our country as have
been formed by habit, and not by a sudden jerk of authority, were
so many little images of the great country in which the heart found
something which it could fill. The love to the whole is not extinguished
by this subordinate partiality. Perhaps it is a sort of elemental
training to those higher and more large regards, by which alone men
come to be affected, as with their own concern, in the prosperity of
a kingdom so extensive as that of France. In that general territory
itself, as in the old name of provinces, the citizens are interested
from old prejudices and unreasoned habits, and not on account of the
geometric properties of its figure. The power and pre-eminence of Paris
does certainly press down and hold these republics together as long
as it lasts. But, for the reasons I have already given you, I think it
cannot last very long.
PRINCIPLE OF CHURCH PROPERTY.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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