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
commerce raised by the wise and liberal labors and expenses of the
present and late pontiffs, ports not more belonging to the
Ecclesiastical State than to the commerce of Great Britain, thus
wresting from his hands the power of the keys of the centre of Italy, as
before they had taken possession of the keys of the northern part from
the hands of the unhappy King of Sardinia, the natural ally of England?
Is it to him we are to prove our good faith in the peace which we are
soliciting to receive from the hands of his and our robbers, the enemies
of all arts, all sciences, all civilization, and all commerce?
Is it to the Cispadane or to the Transpadane republics, which have been
forced to bow under the galling yoke of French liberty, that we address
all these pledges of our sincerity and love of peace with their
unnatural parents?
Are we by this Declaration to satisfy the King of Naples, whom we have
left to struggle as he can, after our abdication of Corsica, and the
flight of the whole naval force of England out of the whole circuit of
the Mediterranean, abandoning our allies, our commerce, and the honor of
a nation once the protectress of all other nations, because strengthened
by the independence and enriched by the commerce of them all? By the
express provisions of a recent treaty, we had engaged with the King of
Naples to keep a naval force in the Mediterranean. But, good God! was a
treaty at all necessary for this? The uniform policy of this kingdom as
a state, and eminently so as a commercial state, has at all times led us
to keep a powerful squadron and a commodious naval station in that
central sea, which borders upon and which connects a far greater number
and variety of states, European, Asiatic, and African, than any other.
Without such a naval force, France must become despotic mistress of that
sea, and of all the countries whose shores it washes. Our commerce must
become vassal to her and dependent on her will. Since we are come no
longer to trust to our force in arms, but to our dexterity in
negotiation, and begin to pay a desperate court to a proud and coy
usurpation, and have finally sent an ambassador to the Bourbon Regicides
at Paris, the King of Naples, who saw that no reliance was to be placed
on our engagements, or on any pledge of our adherence to our nearest and
dearest interests, has been obliged to send his ambassador also to join
the rest of the squalid tribe of the representatives of degraded kings.
This monarch, surely, does not want any proof of the sincerity of our
amicable dispositions to that amicable republic, into whose arms he has
been given by our desertion of him.
To look to the powers of the North.--It is not to the Danish ambassador,
insolently treated in his own character and in ours, that we are to give
proofs of the Regicide arrogance, and of our disposition to submit to
it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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