The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 01 (of 12)Burke, Edmund
Philosophy
The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 01 (of 12)
Burke, Edmund
Great Britain -- Politics and government -- 1760-1820; Political science -- Early works to 1800
This piece is called "The Present State of the Nation." It may be
considered as a sort of digest of the avowed maxims of a certain
political school, the effects of whose doctrines and practices this
country will fuel long and severely. It is made up of a farrago of
almost every topic which has been agitated on national affairs in
parliamentary debate, or private conversation, for these last seven
years. The oldest controversies are hauled out of the dust with which
time and neglect had covered them. Arguments ten times repeated, a
thousand times answered before, are here repeated again. Public accounts
formerly printed and reprinted revolve once more, and find their old
station in this sober meridian. All the commonplace lamentations upon
the decay of trade, the increase of taxes, and the high price of labor
and provisions, are here retailed again and again in the same tone with
which they have drawled through columns of Gazetteers and Advertisers
for a century together. Paradoxes which affront common sense, and
uninteresting barren truths which generate no conclusion, are thrown in
to augment unwieldy bulk, without adding anything to weight. Because two
accusations are better than one, contradictions are set staring one
another in the face, without even an attempt to reconcile them. And, to
give the whole a sort of portentous air of labor and information, the
table of the House of Commons is swept into this grand reservoir of
politics.
As to the composition, it bears a striking and whimsical resemblance to
a funeral sermon, not only in the pathetic prayer with which it
concludes, but in the style and tenor of the whole performance. It is
piteously doleful, nodding every now and then towards dulness; well
stored with pious frauds, and, like most discourses of the sort, much
better calculated for the private advantage of the preacher than the
edification of the hearers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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