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
Under the authority and with the guidance of those principles I
proceed,--wishing that nothing in any establishment may be changed,
where I am not able to make a strong, direct, and solid application of
those principles, or of some one of them. An economical constitution is
a necessary basis for an economical administration.
First, with regard to the sovereign jurisdictions, I must observe, Sir,
that whoever takes a view of this kingdom in a cursory manner will
imagine that he beholds a solid, compacted, uniform system of monarchy,
in which all inferior jurisdictions are but as rays diverging from one
centre. But on examining it more nearly, you find much eccentricity and
confusion. It is not a _monarchy_ in strictness. But, as in the Saxon
times this country was an heptarchy, it is now a strange sort of
_pentarchy_. It is divided into five several distinct principalities,
besides the supreme. There is, indeed, this difference from the Saxon
times,--that, as in the itinerant exhibitions of the stage, for want of
a complete company, they are obliged to throw a variety of parts on
their chief performer, so our sovereign condescends himself to act not
only the principal, but all the subordinate parts in the play. He
condescends to dissipate the royal character, and to trifle with those
light, subordinate, lacquered sceptres in those hands that sustain the
ball representing the world, or which wield the trident that commands
the ocean. Cross a brook, and you lose the King of England; but you have
some comfort in coming again under his Majesty, though "shorn of his
beams," and no more than Prince of Wales. Go to the north, and you find
him dwindled to a Duke of Lancaster; turn to the west of that north, and
he pops upon you in the humble character of Earl of Chester. Travel a
few miles on, the Earl of Chester disappears, and the king surprises
you again as Count Palatine of Lancaster. If you travel beyond Mount
Edgecombe, you find him ones more in his incognito, and he is Duke of
Cornwall. So that, quite fatigued and satiated with this dull variety,
you are infinitely refreshed when you return to the sphere of his proper
splendor, and behold your amiable sovereign in his true, simple,
undisguised, native character of Majesty.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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