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
is not the victory of party over party. It is a destruction and
decomposition of the whole society; which never can be made of right by
any faction, however powerful, nor without terrible consequences to all
about it, both in the act and in the example. This pretended republic is
founded in crimes, and exists by wrong and robbery; and wrong and
robbery, far from a title to anything, is war with mankind. To be at
peace with robbery is to be an accomplice with it.
Mere locality does not constitute a body politic. Had Cade and his gang
got possession of London, they would not have been the lord mayor,
aldermen, and common council. The body politic of France existed in the
majesty of its throne, in the dignity of its nobility, in the honor of
its gentry, in the sanctity of its clergy, in the reverence of its
magistracy, in the weight and consideration due to its landed property
in the several bailliages, in the respect due to its movable substance
represented by the corporations of the kingdom. All these particular
_molecules_ united form the great mass of what is truly the body politic
in all countries. They are so many deposits and receptacles of justice;
because they can only exist by justice. Nation is a moral essence, not a
geographical arrangement, or a denomination of the nomenclator. France,
though out of her territorial possession, exists; because the sole
possible claimant, I mean the proprietary, and the government to which
the proprietary adheres, exists and claims. God forbid, that if you were
expelled from your house by ruffians and assassins, that I should call
the material walls, doors, and windows of ---- the ancient and honorable
family of ----! Am I to transfer to the intruders, who, not content to
turn you out naked to the world, would rob you of your very name, all
the esteem and respect I owe to you? The Regicides in France are not
France. France is out of her bounds, but the kingdom is the same.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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