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 the mean time, that power, which all these changes aimed at securing,
remains still as tottering and as uncertain as ever. They are delivered
up into the hands of those who feel neither respect for their persons,
nor gratitude for their favours; who are put about them in appearance
to serve, in reality to govern them; and, when the signal is given, to
abandon and destroy them, in order to set up some new dupe of ambition,
who in his turn is to be abandoned and destroyed. Thus, living in
a state of continual uneasiness and ferment, softened only by the
miserable consolation of giving now and then preferments to those for
whom they have no value; they are unhappy in their situation, yet
find it impossible to resign. Until, at length, soured in temper, and
disappointed by the very attainment of their ends, in some angry, in
some haughty, or some negligent moment, they incur the displeasure of
those upon whom they have rendered their very being dependent. Then
perierunt tempora longi servitii; they are cast off with scorn; they are
turned out, emptied of all natural character, of all intrinsic worth, of
all essential dignity, and deprived of every consolation of friendship.
Having rendered all retreat to old principles ridiculous, and to old
regards impracticable, not being able to counterfeit pleasure, or to
discharge discontent, nothing being sincere or right, or balanced in
their minds, it is more than a chance, that, in the delirium of the
last stage of their distempered power, they make an insane political
testament, by which they throw all their remaining weight and
consequence into the scale of their declared enemies, and the avowed
authors of their destruction.
INJUSTICE TO OUR OWN AGE.
If these evil dispositions should spread much farther they must end in
our destruction; for nothing can save a people destitute of public and
private faith. However, the author, for the present state of things, has
extended the charge by much too widely; as men are but too apt to take
the measure of all mankind from their own particular acquaintance.
Barren as this age may be in the growth of honour and virtue, the
country does not want, at this moment, as strong, and those not a few,
examples as were ever known, of an unshaken adherence to principle, and
attachment to connexion, against every allurement of interest. Those
examples are not furnished by the great alone; nor by those, whose
activity in public affairs may render it suspected that they make such a
character one of the rounds in their ladder of ambition; but by men more
quiet, and more in the shade, on whom an unmixed sense of honour alone
could operate.
FALSE COALITIONS.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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