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.
Nothing can render this a point of indifference to the nation, but what
must either render us totally desperate, or sooth us into the security
of idiots. We must soften into a credulity below the milkiness of
infancy, to think all men virtuous. We must be tainted with a malignity
truly diabolical, to believe all the world to be equally wicked and
corrupt. Men are in public as in private, some good, some evil. The
elevation of the one, and the depression of the other, are the first
objects of all true policy. But that form of government, which, neither
in its direct institutions, nor in their immediate tendency, has
contrived to throw its affairs into the most trustworthy hands, but
has left its whole executory system to be disposed of agreeably to the
uncontrolled pleasures of any one man, however excellent or virtuous, is
a plan of polity defective not only in that member, but consequentially
erroneous in every part of it.
POPULAR DISCONTENT.
To complain of the age we live in, to murmur at the present possessors
of power, to lament the past, to conceive extravagant hopes of the
future, are the common dispositions of the greatest part of mankind;
indeed, the necessary effects of the ignorance and levity of the vulgar.
Such complaints and humours have existed in all times; yet as all
times have NOT been alike, true political sagacity manifests itself
in distinguishing that complaint which only characterises the general
infirmity of human nature, from those which are symptoms of the
particular distemperature of our own air and season.
THE PEOPLE AND THEIR RULERS.
I am not one of those who think that the people are never in the wrong.
They have been so, frequently and outrageously, both in other countries
and in this. But I do say, that in all disputes between them and their
rulers, the presumption is at least upon a par in favour of the people.
Experience may perhaps justify me in going farther. When popular
discontents have been very prevalent, it may well be affirmed and
supported, that there has been generally something found amiss in
the constitution, or in the conduct of government. The people have no
interest in disorder. When they do wrong, it is their error, and not
their crime.
GOVERNMENT FAVOURITISM.
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