The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 03 (of 12)Burke, Edmund
History
The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 03 (of 12)
Burke, Edmund
Great Britain -- Politics and government -- 1760-1820; Political science -- Early works to 1800
You see, Sir, by the long letter I have transmitted to you, that, though
I do most heartily wish that France may be animated by a spirit of
rational liberty, and that I think you bound, in all honest policy, to
provide a permanent body in which that spirit may reside, and an
effectual organ by which it may act, it is my misfortune to entertain
great doubts concerning several material points in your late
transactions.
You imagined, when you wrote last, that I might possibly be reckoned
among the approvers of certain proceedings in France, from the solemn
public seal of sanction they have received from two clubs of gentlemen
in London, called the Constitutional Society, and the Revolution
Society.
I certainly have the honor to belong to more clubs than one in which the
Constitution of this kingdom and the principles of the glorious
Revolution are held in high reverence; and I reckon myself among the
most forward in my zeal for maintaining that Constitution and those
principles in their utmost purity and vigor. It is because I do so that
I think it necessary for me that there should be no mistake. Those who
cultivate the memory of our Revolution, and those who are attached to
the Constitution of this kingdom, will take good care how they are
involved with persons who, under the pretext of zeal towards the
Revolution and Constitution, too frequently wander from their true
principles, and are ready on every occasion to depart from the firm, but
cautious and deliberate, spirit which produced the one and which
presides in the other. Before I proceed to answer the more material
particulars in your letter, I shall beg leave to give you such
information as I have been able to obtain of the two clubs which have
thought proper, as bodies, to interfere in the concerns of
France,--first assuring you that I am not, and that I have never been, a
member of either of those societies.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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