The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 04 (of 12)Burke, Edmund
Philosophy
The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 04 (of 12)
Burke, Edmund
Great Britain -- Politics and government -- 1760-1820; Political science -- Early works to 1800
that your philosophic lords chose, with an ostentatious pomp and luxury,
to feast an incredible number of idle and thoughtless people, collected
with art and pains from all quarters of the world. They constructed a
vast amphitheatre in which they raised a species of pillory.[3] On this
pillory they set their lawful king and queen, with an insulting figure
over their heads. There they exposed these objects of pity and respect
to all good minds to the derision of an unthinking and unprincipled
multitude, degenerated even from the versatile tenderness which marks
the irregular and capricious feelings of the populace. That their cruel
insult might have nothing wanting to complete it, they chose the
anniversary of that day in which they exposed the life of their prince
to the most imminent dangers and the vilest indignities, just following
the instant when the assassins, whom they had hired without owning,
first openly took up arms against their king, corrupted his guards,
surprised his castle, butchered some of the poor invalids of his
garrison, murdered his governor, and, like wild beasts, tore to pieces
the chief magistrate of his capital city, on account of his fidelity to
his service.
Till the justice of the world is awakened, such as these will go on,
without admonition, and without provocation, to every extremity. Those
who have made the exhibition of the fourteenth of July are capable of
every evil. They do not commit crimes for their designs; but they form
designs that they may commit crimes. It is not their necessity, but
their nature, that impels them. They are modern philosophers, which when
you say of them, you express everything that is ignoble, savage, and
hard-hearted.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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