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
As to the faction exercising power, to suppose that monarchy can be
supported by principled regicides, religion by professed atheists, order
by clubs of Jacobins, property by committees of proscription, and
jurisprudence by revolutionary tribunals, is to be sanguine in a degree
of which I am incapable. On them I decide, for myself, that these
persons are not the legal corporation of France, and that it is not with
them we can (if we would) settle the government of France.
Since, then, we have decided for monarchy in that kingdom, we ought also
to settle who is to be the monarch, who is to be the guardian of a
minor, and how the monarch and monarchy is to be modified and supported;
if the monarch is to be elected, who the electors are to be,--if
hereditary, what order is established, corresponding with an hereditary
monarchy, and fitted to maintain it; who are to modify it in its
exercise; who are to restrain its powers, where they ought to be
limited, to strengthen them, where they are to be supported, or, to
enlarge them, where the object, the time, and the circumstances may
demand their extension. These are things which, in the outline, ought to
be made distinct and clear; for if they are not, (especially with regard
to those great points, who are the proprietors of the soil, and what is
the corporation of the kingdom,) there is nothing to hinder the complete
establishment of a Jacobin republic, (such as that formed in 1790 and
1791,) under the name of a _Démocratie Royale_. Jacobinism does not
consist in the having or not having a certain pageant under the name of
a king, but "in taking the people as equal individuals, without any
corporate name or description, without attention to property, without
division of powers, and forming the government of delegates from a
number of men so constituted,--in destroying or confiscating property,
and bribing the public creditors, or the poor, with the spoils, now of
one part of the community, now of another, without regard to
prescription or possession."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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