The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 02 (of 12)Burke, Edmund
Philosophy
The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 02 (of 12)
Burke, Edmund
Great Britain -- Politics and government -- 1760-1820; Political science -- Early works to 1800
There are many circumstances in the zeal shown for civil war which seem
to discover but little of real magnanimity. The addressers offer their
own persons, and they are satisfied with hiring Germans. They promise
their private fortunes, and they mortgage their country. They have all
the merit of volunteers, without risk of person or charge of
contribution; and when the unfeeling arm of a foreign soldiery pours out
their kindred blood like water, they exult and triumph as if they
themselves had performed some notable exploit. I am really ashamed of
the fashionable language which has been held for some time past, which,
to say the best of it, is full of levity. You know that I allude to the
general cry against the cowardice of the Americans, as if we despised
them for not making the king's soldiery purchase the advantage they have
obtained at a dearer rate. It is not, Gentlemen, it is not to respect
the dispensations of Providence, nor to provide any decent retreat in
the mutability of human affairs. It leaves no medium between insolent
victory and infamous defeat. It tends to alienate our minds further and
further from our natural regards, and to make an eternal rent and schism
in the British nation. Those who do not wish for such a separation would
not dissolve that cement of reciprocal esteem and regard which can alone
bind together the parts of this great fabric. It ought to be our wish,
as it is our duty, not only to forbear this style of outrage ourselves,
but to make every one as sensible as we can of the impropriety and
unworthiness of the tempers which give rise to it, and which designing
men are laboring with such malignant industry to diffuse amongst us. It
is our business to counteract them, if possible,--if possible, to awake
our natural regards, and to revive the old partiality to the English
name. Without something of this kind I do not see how it is ever
practicable really to reconcile with those whose affection, after all,
must be the surest hold of our government, and which is a thousand times
more worth to us than the mercenary zeal of all the circles of Germany.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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