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.
by varieties of people, by succession of civilizing conquests and
civilizing settlements in a series of seventeen hundred years, you shall
see as much added to her by America in the course of a single life!" If
this state of his country had been foretold to him, would it not
require all the sanguine credulity of youth, and all the fervid glow of
enthusiasm, to make him believe it? Fortunate man, he has lived to see
it! Fortunate, indeed, if he lives to see nothing that shall vary the
prospect, and cloud the setting of his day!
CANDID POLICY.
Refined policy ever has been the parent of confusion; and ever will
be so, as long as the world endures. Plain good intention, which is
as easily discovered at the first view, as fraud is surely detected at
last, is, let me say, of no mean force in the government of mankind.
Genuine simplicity of heart is a healing and cementing principle. My
plan, therefore, being formed upon the most simple grounds imaginable,
may disappoint some people, when they hear it. It has nothing to
recommend it to the pruriency of curious ears. There is nothing at
all new and captivating in it. It has nothing of the splendour of the
project which has been lately laid upon your table by the noble lord in
the blue riband. It does not propose to fill your lobby with squabbling
colony agents, who will require the interposition of your mace, at
every instant, to keep the peace amongst them. It does not institute
a magnificent auction of finance, where captivated provinces come to
general ransom by bidding against each other, until you knock down the
hammer, and determine a proportion of payments beyond all the powers of
algebra to equalize and settle.
WISDOM OF CONCESSION.
Peace implies reconciliation; and where there has been a material
dispute, reconciliation does in a manner always imply concession on the
one part or the other. In this state of things I make no difficulty
in affirming that the proposal ought to originate from us. Great and
acknowledged force is not impaired, either in effect or in opinion, by
an unwillingness to exert itself. The superior power may offer peace
with honour and with safety. Such an offer from such a power will be
attributed to magnanimity. But the concessions of the weak are the
concessions of fear. When such a one is disarmed, he is wholly at the
mercy of his superior; and he loses for ever that time and those chances
which, as they happen to all men, are the strength and resources of all
inferior power.
MAGNANIMITY.
As for the trifling petulance which the rage of party stirs up in little
minds, though it should show itself even in this court, it has not made
the slightest impression on me. The highest flight of such clamorous
birds is winged in an inferior region of the air. We hear them, and we
look upon them, just as you, gentlemen, when you enjoy the serene air
on your lofty rocks, look down upon the gulls that skim the mud of your
river, when it is exhausted of its tide.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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