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
It is true that in this present work, which the author professedly
designed for an appeal to foreign nations and posterity, he has dressed
up the philosophy of his own faction in as decent a garb as he could to
make her appearance in public; but through every disguise her hideous
figure may be distinctly seen. If, however, the reader still wishes to
see her in all her naked deformity, I would further refer him to a
private letter of Brissot, written towards the end of the last year, and
quoted in a late very able pamphlet of Mallet Du Pan. "We must" (says
our philosopher) "_set fire to the four corners of Europe_"; in that
alone is our safety. "_Dumouriez cannot suit us_. I always distrusted
him. Miranda is the general for us: he understands the _revolutionary
power_; he has _courage, lights_," &c.[5] Here everything is fairly
avowed in plain language. The triumph of philosophy is the universal
conflagration of Europe; the only real dissatisfaction with Dumouriez is
a suspicion of his moderation; and the secret motive of that preference
which in this very pamphlet the author gives to Miranda, though without
assigning his reasons, is declared to be the superior fitness of that
foreign adventurer for the purposes of subversion and destruction. On
the other hand, if there can be any man in this country so hardy as to
undertake the defence or the apology of the present monstrous usurpers
of France, and if it should be said in their favor, that it is not just
to credit the charges of their enemy Brissot against them, who have
actually tried and condemned him on the very same charges among others,
we are luckily supplied with the best possible evidence in support of
this part of his book against them: it comes from among themselves.
Camille Desmoulins published the History of the Brissotins in answer to
this very address of Brissot. It was the counter-manifesto of the last
holy revolution of the 31st of May; and the flagitious orthodoxy of his
writings at that period has been admitted in the late scrutiny of him by
the Jacobin Club, when they saved him from that guillotine "which he
grazed." In the beginning of his work he displays "the task of glory,"
as he calls it, which presented itself at the opening of the Convention.
All is summed up in two points: "To create the French Republic; _to
disorganize Europe; perhaps to purge it of its tyrants by the eruption
of the volcanic principles of equality_."[6] The coincidence is exact;
the proof is complete and irresistible.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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