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.
In other words, their will is the law, not only at home, but as to
the concerns of every nation. Who has made that law but the regicide
republic itself, whose laws, like those of the Medes and Persians, they
cannot alter or abrogate, or even so much as take into consideration?
Without the least ceremony or compliment, they have sent out of the
world whole sets of laws and lawgivers. They have swept away the very
constitutions under which the legislators acted, and the laws were made.
Even the fundamental sacred rights of man they have not scrupled to
profane. They have set this holy code at naught with ignominy and scorn.
Thus they treat all their domestic laws and constitutions, and even what
they had considered as a law of nature; but whatever they have put
their seal on for the purposes of their ambition, and the ruin of their
neighbours, this alone is invulnerable, impassible, immortal. Assuming
to be masters of everything human and divine, here, and here alone, it
seems they are limited, "cooped and cabined in;" and this omnipotent
legislature finds itself wholly without the power of exercising its
favourite attribute, the love of peace. In other words, they are
powerful to usurp, impotent to restore; and equally by their power and
their impotence they aggrandize themselves, and weaken and impoverish
you and all other nations.
GOVERNMENT NOT TO BE RASHLY CENSURED.
The PURPOSE for which the abuses of government are brought into view,
forms a very material consideration in the mode of treating them. The
complaints of a friend are things very different from the invectives of
an enemy. The charge of abuses on the late monarchy of France was not
intended to lead to its reformation, but to justify its destruction.
They, who have raked into all history for the faults of kings, and who
have aggravated every fault they have found, have acted consistently;
because they acted as enemies. No man can be a friend to a tempered
monarchy who bears a decided hatred to monarchy itself. He, who at the
present time, is favourable, or even fair, to that system, must
act towards it as towards a friend with frailties, who is under the
prosecution of implacable foes. I think it a duty, in that case, not to
inflame the public mind against the obnoxious person by any exaggeration
of his faults. It is our duty rather to palliate his errors and defects,
or to cast them into the shade, and industriously to bring forward any
good qualities that he may happen to possess. But when the man is to be
amended, and by amendment to be preserved, then the line of duty takes
another direction. When his safety is effectually provided for, it then
becomes the office of a friend to urge his faults and vices with all
the energy of enlightened affection, to paint them in their most vivid
colours, and to bring the moral patient to a better habit. Thus I think
with regard to individuals; thus I think with regard to ancient and
respected governments and orders of men.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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