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
Had we carried on the war on the side of France which looks towards the
Channel or the Atlantic, we should have attacked our enemy on his weak
and unarmed side. We should not have to reckon on the loss of a man who
did not fall in battle. We should have an ally in the heart of the
country, who to our hundred thousand would at one time have added eighty
thousand men at the least, and all animated by principle, by enthusiasm,
and by vengeance: motives which secured them to the cause in a very
different manner from some of those allies whom we subsidized with
millions. This ally, (or rather, this principal in the war,) by the
confession of the Regicide himself, was more formidable to him than all
his other foes united. Warring there, we should have led our arms to the
capital of Wrong. Defeated, we could not fail (proper precautions taken)
of a sure retreat. Stationary, and only supporting the royalists, an
impenetrable barrier, an impregnable rampart, would have been formed
between the enemy and his naval power. We are probably the only nation
who have declined to act against an enemy when it might have been done
in his own country, and who, having an armed, a powerful, and a long
victorious ally in that country, declined all effectual coöperation, and
suffered him to perish for want of support. On the plan of a war in
France, every advantage that our allies might obtain would be doubled
in its effect. Disasters on the one side might have a fair chance of
being compensated by victories on the other. Had we brought the main of
our force to bear upon that quarter, all the operations of the British
and Imperial crowns would have been combined. The war would have had
system, correspondence, and a certain direction. But as the war has been
pursued, the operations of the two crowns have not the smallest degree
of mutual bearing or relation.
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