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
To show that he has in his last publication abandoned those principles
of liberty which have given energy to his youth, and in spite of his
censors will afford repose and consolation to his declining age, those
who have thought proper in Parliament to declare against his book ought
to have produced something in it which directly or indirectly militates
with any rational plan of free government. It is something
extraordinary, that they whose memories have so well served them with
regard to light and ludicrous expressions, which years had consigned to
oblivion, should not have been able to quote a single passage in a piece
so lately published, which contradicts anything he has formerly ever
said in a style either ludicrous or serious. They quote his former
speeches and his former votes, but not one syllable from the book. It is
only by a collation of the one with the other that the alleged
inconsistency can be established. But as they are unable to cite any
such contradictory passage, so neither can they show anything in the
general tendency and spirit of the whole work unfavorable to a rational
and generous spirit of liberty; unless a warm opposition to the spirit
of levelling, to the spirit of impiety, to the spirit of proscription,
plunder, murder, and cannibalism, be adverse to the true principles of
freedom.
The author of that book is supposed to have passed from extreme to
extreme; but he has always kept himself in a medium. This charge is not
so wonderful. It is in the nature of things, that they who are in the
centre of a circle should appear directly opposed to those who view them
from any part of the circumference. In that middle point, however, he
will still remain, though he may hear people who themselves run beyond
Aurora and the Ganges cry out that he is at the extremity of the West.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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