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
In my opinion the squire was in the right. He was satisfied with his
first ramble and his first injuries. But reason of state and common
sense are two things. If it were not for this difference, it might not
appear of absolute necessity, after having received a certain quantity
of buffetings by advance, that we should send a peer of the realm to the
scum of the earth to collect the debt to the last farthing, and to
receive, with infinite aggravation, the same scorns which had been paid
to our supplication through a commoner: but it was proper, I suppose,
that the whole of our country, in all its orders, should have a share of
the indignity, and, as in reason, that the higher orders should touch
the larger proportion.
This business was not ended because our dignity was wounded, or because
our patience was worn out with contumely and scorn. We had not disgorged
one particle of the nauseous doses with which we were so liberally
crammed by the mountebanks of Paris in order to drug and diet us into
perfect tameness. No,--we waited till the morbid strength of our
_boulimia_ for their physic had exhausted the well-stored dispensary of
their empiricism. It is impossible to guess at the term to which our
forbearance would have extended. The Regicides were more fatigued with
giving blows than the callous cheek of British diplomacy was hurt in
receiving them. They had no way left for getting rid of this mendicant
perseverance, but by sending for the beadle, and forcibly driving our
embassy "of shreds and patches," with all its mumping cant, from the
inhospitable door of Cannibal Castle,--
"Where the gaunt mastiff, growling at the gate,
Affrights the beggar whom he longs to eat,"
I think we might have found, before the rude hand of insolent office was
on our shoulder, and the staff of usurped authority brandished over our
heads, that contempt of the suppliant is not the best forwarder of a
suit,--that national disgrace is not the high-road to security, much
less to power and greatness. Patience, indeed, strongly indicates the
lore of peace; but mere love does not always lead to enjoyment. It is
the power of winning that palm which insures our wearing it. Virtues
have their place; and out of their place they hardly deserve the
name,--they pass into the neighboring vice. The patience of fortitude
and the endurance of pusillanimity are things very different, as in
their principle, so in their effects.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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