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
They are embarrassed, indeed, in the highest degree, but not wholly
resourceless. They are without the species of money. Circulation of
money is a great convenience, but a substitute for it may be found.
Whilst the great objects of production and consumption, corn, cattle,
wine, and the like, exist in a country, the means of giving them
circulation, with more or less convenience, cannot be _wholly_ wanting.
The great confiscation of the Church and of the crown lands, and of the
appanages of the princes, for the purchase of all which their paper is
always received at par, gives means of continually destroying and
continually creating; and this perpetual destruction and renovation
feeds the speculative market, and prevents, and will prevent, till that
fund of confiscation begins to fail, a _total_ depreciation.
[Sidenote: Moneyed interest not necessary to them.]
But all consideration of public credit in France is of little avail at
present. The action, indeed, of the moneyed interest was of absolute
necessity at the beginning of this Revolution; but the French republic
can stand without any assistance from that description of men, which, as
things are now circumstanced, rather stands in need of assistance itself
from the power which alone substantially exists in France: I mean the
several districts and municipal republics, and the several clubs which
direct all their affairs and appoint all their magistrates. This is the
power now paramount to everything, even to the Assembly itself called
National and that to which tribunals, priesthood, laws, finances, and
both descriptions of military power are wholly subservient, so far as
the military power of either description yields obedience to any name of
authority.
The world of contingency and political combination is much larger than
we are apt to imagine. We never can say what may or may not happen,
without a view to all the actual circumstances. Experience, upon other
data than those, is of all things the most delusive. Prudence in new
cases can do nothing on grounds of retrospect. A constant vigilance and
attention to the train of things as they successively emerge, and to act
on what they direct, are the only sure courses. The physician that let
blood, and by blood-letting cured one kind of plague, in the next added
to its ravages. That power goes with property is not universally true,
and the idea that the operation of it is certain and invariable may
mislead us very fatally.
[Sidenote: Power separated from property.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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