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.
Economy and public spirit have made a beneficent and an honest spoil;
they have plundered from extravagance and luxury, for the use of
substantial service, a revenue of near four hundred thousand pounds. The
reform of the finances, joined to this reform of the court, gives to the
public nine hundred thousand pounds a year and upwards.
The minister who does these things is a great man--but the king who
desires that they should be done is a far greater. We must do justice to
our enemies--these are the acts of a patriot king. I am not in dread of
the vast armies of France; I am not in dread of the gallant spirit of
its brave and numerous nobility; I am not alarmed even at the great
navy which has been so miraculously created. All these things Louis the
Fourteenth had before. With all these things, the French monarchy has
more than once fallen prostrate at the feet of the public faith of Great
Britain. It was the want of public credit which disabled France from
recovering after her defeats, or recovering even from her victories and
triumphs. It was a prodigal court, it was an ill-ordered revenue, that
sapped the foundations of all her greatness. Credit cannot exist under
the arm of necessity. Necessity strikes at credit, I allow, with a
heavier and quicker blow under an arbitrary monarchy, than under a
limited and balanced government; but still necessity and credit are
natural enemies, and cannot be long reconciled in any situation. From
necessity and corruption, a free state may lose the spirit of that
complex constitution which is the foundation of confidence.
REFORM OUGHT TO BE PROGRESSIVE.
Whenever we improve, it is right to leave room for a further
improvement. It is right to consider, to look about us, to examine
the effect of what we have done. Then we can proceed with confidence,
because we can proceed with intelligence. Whereas in hot reformations,
in what men, more zealous than considerate, call MAKING CLEAR WORK, the
whole is generally so crude, so harsh, so indigested; mixed with so much
imprudence, and so much injustice; so contrary to the whole course of
human nature and human institutions, that the very people who are most
eager for it are among the first to grow disgusted at what they have
done. Then some part of the abdicated grievance is recalled from its
exile in order to become a corrective of the correction. Then the abuse
assumes all the credit and popularity of a reform. The very idea of
purity and disinterestedness in politics falls into disrepute, and is
considered as a vision of hot and inexperienced men; and thus disorders
become incurable, not by the virulence of their own quality, but by the
unapt and violent nature of the remedies. A great part, therefore, of my
idea of reform is meant to operate gradually; some benefits will come at
a nearer, some at a more remote period. We must no more make haste to be
rich by parsimony, than by intemperate acquisition.
CIVIL FREEDOM.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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