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.
The other source of our power is commerce, of which you are so large
a part, and which cannot exist, no more than your liberty, without a
connection with many virtues. It has ever been a very particular and
a very favourite object of my study, in its principles, and in its
details. I think many here are acquainted with the truth of what I say.
This I know, that I have ever had my house open, and my poor services
ready, for traders and manufacturers of every denomination. My favourite
ambition is to have those services acknowledged. I now appear before
you to make trial, whether my earnest endeavours have been so
wholly oppressed by the weakness of my abilities as to be rendered
insignificant in the eyes of a great trading city; or whether you
choose to give a weight to humble abilities, for the sake of the honest
exertions with which they are accompanied. This is my trial to-day.
My industry is not on trial. Of my industry I am sure, as far as my
constitution of mind and body admitted.
BATHURST AND AMERICA'S FUTURE.
Let us, however, before with descend from this noble eminence, reflect
that this growth of our national prosperity has happened within the
short period of the life of man. It has happened within sixty-eight
years. There are those alive whose memory might touch the two
extremities. For instance, my Lord Bathurst might remember all the
stages of the progress. He was, in 1704, of an age at least to be made
to comprehend such things. He was then old enough "acta parentum jam
legere, et quae sit poterit cognoscere virtus." Suppose, Sir, that the
angel of this auspicious youth, foreseeing the many virtues which made
him one of the most amiable, as he is one of the most fortunate, men
of his age, had opened to him in vision, that when, in the fourth
generation, the third prince of the house of Brunswick had sat twelve
years on the throne of that nation, which (by the happy issue of
moderate and healing councils) was to be made Great Britain, he should
see his son, lord chancellor of England, turn back the current of
hereditary dignity to its fountain, and raise him to a higher rank of
peerage, whilst he enriched the family with a new one. If amidst these
bright and happy scenes of domestic honour and prosperity, that angel
should have drawn up the curtain, and unfolded the rising glories of his
country, and whilst he was gazing with admiration on the then commercial
grandeur of England, the genius should point out to him a little speck,
scarce visible in the mass of the national interest, a small seminal
principle, rather than a formed body, and should tell him--"Young man,
there is America--which at this day serves for little more than to amuse
you with stories of savage men, and uncouth manners; yet shall, before
you taste of death, show itself equal to the whole of that commerce
which now attracts the envy of the world. Whatever England has been
growing to by a progressive increase of improvement, brought in
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