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
their fears had led astray; that he would have rekindled the martial
ardor of his citizens; that he would have held out to them the example
of their ancestry, the assertor of Europe, and the scourge of French
ambition; that he would have reminded them of a posterity, which, if
this nefarious robbery, under the fraudulent name and false color of a
government, should in full power be seated in the heart of Europe, must
forever be consigned to vice, impiety, barbarism, and the most
ignominious slavery of body and mind. In so holy a cause it was presumed
that he would (as in the beginning of the war he did) have opened all
the temples, and with prayer, with fasting, and with supplication,
(better directed than to the grim Moloch of Regicide in France,) have
called upon us to raise that united cry which has: so often stormed
heaven, and with a pious violence forced down blessings upon a repentant
people. It was hoped, that, when he had invoked upon his endeavors the
favorable regard of the Protector of the human race, it would be seen
that his menaces to the enemy and his prayers to the Almighty were not
followed, but accompanied, with correspondent action. It was hoped that
his shrilling trumpet should be heard, not to announce a show, but to
sound a charge.
Such a conclusion to such a declaration and such a speech would have
been a thing of course,--so much a thing of course, that I will be bold
to say, if in any ancient history, the Roman for instance, (supposing
that in Rome the matter of such a detail could have been furnished,) a
consul had gone through such a long train of proceedings, and that there
was a chasm in the manuscripts by which we had lost the conclusion of
the speech and the subsequent part of the narrative, all critics would
agree that a Freinshemius would have been thought to have managed the
supplementary business of a continuator most unskillfully, and to have
supplied the hiatus most improbably, if he had not filled up the gaping
space in a manner somewhat similar (though better executed) to what I
have imagined. But too often different is rational conjecture from
melancholy fact. This exordium, as contrary to all the rules of rhetoric
as to those more essential rules of policy which our situation would
dictate, is intended as a prelude to a deadening and disheartening
proposition; as if all that a minister had to fear in a war of his own
conducting was, that the people should pursue it with too ardent a zeal.
Such a tone as I guessed the minister would have taken, I am very sure,
is the true, unsuborned, unsophisticated language of genuine, natural
feeling, under the smart of patience exhausted and abused. Such a
conduct as the facts stated in the Declaration gave room to expect is
that which true wisdom would have dictated under the impression of those
genuine feelings. Never was there a jar or discord between genuine
sentiment and sound policy. Never, no, never, did Nature say one thing
and Wisdom say another.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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