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
It requires great ingenuity to make out such a parallel between the two
cases as to found a charge of inconsistency in the principles assumed in
arguing the one and the other. What relation had Mr. Fox's India Bill to
the Constitution of France? What relation had that Constitution to the
question of right in an House of Commons to give or to withhold its
confidence from ministers, and to state that opinion to the crown? What
had this discussion to do with Mr. Burke's idea in 1784 of the ill
consequences which must in the end arise to the crown from setting up
the commons at large as an opposite interest to the commons in
Parliament? What has this discussion to do with a recorded warning to
the people of their rashly forming a precipitate judgment against their
representatives? What had Mr. Burke's opinion of the danger of
introducing new theoretic language, unknown to the records of the
kingdom, and calculated to excite vexatious questions, into a
Parliamentary proceeding, to do with the French Assembly, which defies
all precedent, and places its whole glory in realizing what had been
thought the most visionary theories? What had this in common with the
abolition of the French monarchy, or with the principles upon which the
English Revolution was justified,--a Revolution in which Parliament, in
all its acts and all its declarations, religiously adheres to "the form
of sound words," without excluding from private discussions such terms
of art as may serve to conduct an inquiry for which none but private
persons are responsible? These were the topics of Mr. Burke's proposed
remonstrance; all of which topics suppose the existence and mutual
relation of our three estates,--as well as the relation of the East
India Company to the crown, to Parliament, and to the peculiar laws,
rights, and usages of the people of Hindostan. What reference, I say,
had these topics to the Constitution of France, in which there is no
king, no lords, no commons, no India Company to injure or support, no
Indian empire to govern or oppress? What relation had all or any of
these, or any question which could arise between the prerogatives of the
crown and the privileges of Parliament, with the censure of those
factious persons in Great Britain whom Mr. Burke states to be engaged,
not in favor of privilege against prerogative, or of prerogative against
privilege, but in an open attempt against our crown and our Parliament,
against our Constitution in Church and State, against all the parts and
orders which compose the one and the other?
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