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
Mine was from a mild and benevolent sovereign: his from Henry the
Eighth.
Mine had not its fund in the murder of any innocent person of
illustrious rank,[17] or in the pillage of any body of unoffending men.
His grants were from the aggregate and consolidated funds of judgments
iniquitously legal, and from possessions voluntarily surrendered by the
lawful proprietors with the gibbet at their door.
The merit of the grantee whom he derives from was that of being a prompt
and greedy instrument of a _levelling_ tyrant, who oppressed all
descriptions of his people, but who fell with particular fury on
everything that was _great and noble_. Mine has been in endeavoring to
screen every man, in every class, from oppression, and particularly in
defending the high and eminent, who, in the bad times of confiscating
princes, confiscating chief governors, or confiscating demagogues, are
the most exposed to jealousy, avarice, and envy.
The merit of the original grantee of his Grace's pensions was in giving
his hand to the work, and partaking the spoil, with a prince who
plundered a part of the national Church of his time and country. Mine
was in defending the whole of the national Church of my own time and my
own country, and the whole of the national Churches of all countries,
from the principles and the examples which lead to ecclesiastical
pillage, thence to a contempt of _all_ prescriptive titles, thence to
the pillage of _all_ property, and thence to universal desolation.
The merit of the origin of his Grace's fortune was in being a favorite
and chief adviser to a prince who left no liberty to their native
country. My endeavor was to obtain liberty for the municipal country in
which I was born, and for all descriptions and denominations in it. Mine
was to support with unrelaxing vigilance every right, every privilege,
every franchise, in this my adopted, my dearer, and more comprehensive
country; and not only to preserve those rights in this chief seat of
empire, but in every nation, in every land, in every climate, language,
and religion, in the vast domain that still is under the protection, and
the larger that was once under the protection, of the British crown.
His founder's merits were, by arts in which he served his master and
made his fortune, to bring poverty, wretchedness, and depopulation on
his country. Mine were under a benevolent prince, in promoting the
commerce, manufactures, and agriculture of his kingdom,--in which his
Majesty shows an eminent example, who even in his amusements is a
patriot, and in hours of leisure an improver of his native soil.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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