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
devoured whole cities and nations; those wasting pestilences, those
consuming famines, and all those furies that follow in the train of war?
I have no need to exaggerate; and I have purposely avoided a parade of
eloquence on this occasion. I should despise it upon any occasion; else
in mentioning these slaughters, it is obvious how much the whole might
be heightened, by an affecting description of the horrors that attend
the wasting of kingdoms, and sacking of cities. But I do not write to
the vulgar, nor to that which only governs the vulgar, their passions. I
go upon a naked and moderate calculation, just enough, without a
pedantical exactness, to give your lordship some feeling of the effects
of political society. I charge the whole of these effects on political
society. I avow the charge, and I shall presently make it good to your
lordship's satisfaction. The numbers I particularized are about
thirty-six millions. Besides those killed in battles I have said
something, not half what the matter would have justified, but something
I have said concerning the consequences of war even more dreadful than
that monstrous carnage itself which shocks our humanity, and almost
staggers our belief. So that, allowing me in my exuberance one way for
my deficiencies in the other, you will find me not unreasonable. I
think the numbers of men now upon earth are computed at five hundred
millions at the most. Here the slaughter of mankind, on what you will
call a small calculation, amounts to upwards of seventy times the number
of souls this day on the globe: a point which may furnish matter of
reflection to one less inclined to draw consequences than your lordship.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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