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
The Allies, and Great Britain amongst the rest, (and perhaps amongst the
foremost,) have been miserably deluded by this great, fundamental error:
that it was in our power to make peace with this monster of a state,
whenever we chose to forget the crimes that made it great and the
designs that made it formidable. People imagined that their ceasing to
resist was the sure way to be secure. This "pale cast of thought"
sicklied over all their enterprises, and turned all their politics awry.
They could not, or rather they would not, read, in the most unequivocal
declarations of the enemy, and in his uniform conduct, that more safety
was to be found in the most arduous war than in the friendship of that
kind of being. Its hostile amity can be obtained on no terms that do not
imply an inability hereafter to resist its designs. This great, prolific
error (I mean that peace was always in our power) has been the cause
that rendered the Allies indifferent about the _direction_ of the war,
and persuaded them that they might always risk a choice and even a
change in its objects. They seldom improved any advantage,--hoping that
the enemy, affected by it, would make a proffer of peace. Hence it was
that all their early victories have been followed almost immediately
with the usual effects of a defeat, whilst all the advantages obtained
by the Regicides have been followed by the consequences that were
natural. The discomfitures which the Republic of Assassins has suffered
have uniformly called forth new exertions, which not only repaired old
losses, but prepared new conquests. The losses of the Allies, on the
contrary, (no provision having been made on the speculation of such an
event,) have been followed by desertion, by dismay, by disunion, by a
dereliction of their policy, by a flight from their principles, by an
admiration of the enemy, by mutual accusations, by a distrust in every
member of the Alliance of its fellow, of its cause, its power, and its
courage.
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