The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 05 (of 12)Burke, Edmund
History
The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 05 (of 12)
Burke, Edmund
Great Britain -- Politics and government -- 1760-1820; Political science -- Early works to 1800
8. If it had pleased God to suffer him to succeed in this his project
for the amendment to the address, he would forever have ruined this
nation, along with the rest of Europe. At home all the Jacobin
societies, formed for the utter destruction of our Constitution, would
have lifted up their heads, which had been beaten down by the two
proclamations. Those societies would have been infinitely strengthened
and multiplied in every quarter; their dangerous foreign communications
would have been left broad and open; the crown would not have been
authorized to take any measure whatever for our immediate defence by sea
or land. The closest, the most natural, the nearest, and at the same
time, from many internal as well as external circumstances, the weakest
of our allies, Holland, would have been given up, bound hand and foot,
to France, just on the point of invading that republic. A general
consternation would have seized upon all Europe; and all alliance with
every other power, except France, would have been forever rendered
impracticable to us. I think it impossible for any man, who regards the
dignity and safety of his country, or indeed the common safety of
mankind, ever to forget Mr. Fox's proceedings in that tremendous crisis
of all human affairs.
9. Mr. Fox very soon had reason to be apprised of the general dislike of
the Duke of Portland's friends to this conduct. Some of those who had
even voted with him, the day after their vote, expressed their
abhorrence of his amendment, their sense of its inevitable tendency, and
their total alienation from the principles and maxims upon which it was
made; yet the very next day, that is, on Friday, the 14th of December,
he brought on what in effect was the very same business, and on the same
principles, a _second_ time.
10. Although the House does not usually sit on Saturday, he a _third_
time brought on another proposition in the same spirit, and pursued it
with so much heat and perseverance as to sit into Sunday: a thing not
known in Parliament for many years.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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