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
Am I to blame, if I attempt to pay his Grace's hostile reproaches to me
with a friendly admonition to himself? Can I be blamed for pointing out
to him in what manner he is like to be affected, if the sect of the
cannibal philosophers of France should proselytize any considerable part
of this people, and, by their joint proselytizing arms, should conquer
that government to which his Grace does not seem to me to give all the
support his own security demands? Surely it is proper that he, and that
others like him, should know the true genius of this sect,--what their
opinions are,--what they have done, and to whom,--and what (if a
prognostic is to be formed from the dispositions and actions of men) it
is certain they will do hereafter. He ought to know that they have sworn
assistance, the only engagement they ever will keep, to all in this
country who bear a resemblance to themselves, and who think, as such,
that _the whole duty of man_ consists in destruction. They are a
misallied and disparaged branch of the House of Nimrod. They are the
Duke of Bedford's natural hunters; and he is their natural game. Because
he is not very profoundly reflecting, he sleeps in profound security:
they, on the contrary, are always vigilant, active, enterprising, and,
though far removed from any knowledge which makes men estimable or
useful, in all the instruments and resources of evil their leaders are
not meanly instructed or insufficiently furnished. In the French
Revolution everything is new, and, from want of preparation to meet so
unlooked-for an evil, everything is dangerous. Never before this time
was a set of literary men converted into a gang of robbers and
assassins; never before did a den of bravoes and banditti assume the
garb and tone of an academy of philosophers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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