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
The first, calling itself the Constitutional Society, or Society for
Constitutional Information, or by some such title, is, I believe, of
seven or eight years' standing. The institution of this society appears
to be of a charitable, and so far of a laudable nature: it was intended
for the circulation, at the expense of the members, of many books which
few others would be at the expense of buying, and which might lie on the
hands of the booksellers, to the great loss of an useful body of men.
Whether the books so charitably circulated were ever as charitably read
is more than I know. Possibly several of them have been exported to
France, and, like goods not in request here, may with you have found a
market. I have heard much talk of the lights to be drawn from books that
are sent from hence. What improvements they have had in their passage
(as it is said some liquors are meliorated by crossing the sea) I cannot
tell; but I never heard a man of common judgment or the least degree of
information speak a word in praise of the greater part of the
publications circulated by that society; nor have their proceedings been
accounted, except by some of themselves, as of any serious consequence.
Your National Assembly seems to entertain much the same opinion that I
do of this poor charitable club. As a nation, you reserved the whole
stock of your eloquent acknowledgments for the Revolution Society, when
their fellows in the Constitutional were in equity entitled to some
share. Since you have selected the Revolution Society as the great
object of your national thanks and praises, you will think me excusable
in making its late conduct the subject of my observations. The National
Assembly of France has given importance to these gentlemen by adopting
them; and they return the favor by acting as a committee in England for
extending the principles of the National Assembly. Henceforward we must
consider them as a kind of privileged persons, as no inconsiderable
members in the diplomatic body. This is one among the revolutions which
have given splendor to obscurity and distinction to undiscerned merit.
Until very lately I do not recollect to have heard of this club. I am
quite sure that it never occupied a moment of my thoughts,--nor, I
believe, those of any person out of their own set. I find, upon inquiry,
that, on the anniversary of the Revolution in 1688, a club of
Dissenters, but of what denomination I know not, have long had the
custom of hearing a sermon in one of their churches, and that afterwards
they spent the day cheerfully, as other clubs do, at the tavern. But I
never heard that any public measure or political system, much less that
the merits of the constitution of any foreign nation, had been the
subject of a formal proceeding at their festivals, until, to my
inexpressible surprise, I found them in a sort of public capacity, by a
congratulatory address, giving an authoritative sanction to the
proceedings of the National Assembly in France.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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