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
believe, is pleased to consider as that party. Some of them were not
born into the world, and all of them were children, when I entered into
that connection. I give due credit to the censorial brow, to the broad
phylacteries, and to the imposing gravity of those magisterial rabbins
and doctors in the cabala of political science. I admit that "wisdom is
as the gray hair to man, and that learning is like honorable old age."
But, at a time when liberty is a good deal talked of, perhaps I might be
excused, if I caught something of the general indocility. It might not
be surprising, if I lengthened my chain a link or two, and, in an age of
relaxed discipline, gave a trifling indulgence to my own notions. If
that could be allowed, perhaps I might sometimes (by accident, and
without an unpardonable crime) trust as much to my own very careful and
very laborious, though perhaps somewhat purblind disquisitions, as to
their soaring, intuitive, eagle-eyed authority. But the modern liberty
is a precious thing. It must not be profaned by too vulgar an use. It
belongs only to the chosen few, who are born to the hereditary
representation of the whole democracy, and who leave nothing at all, no,
not the offal, to us poor outcasts of the plebeian race.
Amongst those gentlemen who came to authority as soon or sooner than
they came of age I do not mean to include his Grace. With all those
native titles to empire over our minds which distinguish the others, he
has a large share of experience. He certainly ought to understand the
British Constitution better than I do. He has studied it in the
fundamental part. For one election I have seen, he has been concerned in
twenty. Nobody is less of a visionary theorist; nobody has drawn his
speculations more from practice. No peer has condescended to superintend
with more vigilance the declining franchises of the poor commons. "With
thrice great Hermes he has outwatched the Bear." Often have his candles
been burned to the snuff, and glimmered and stunk in the sockets, whilst
he grew pale at his constitutional studies; long, sleepless nights has
he wasted, long, laborious, shiftless journeys has he made, and great
sums has he expended, in order to secure the purity, the independence,
and the sobriety of elections, and to give a check, if possible, to the
ruinous charges that go nearly to the destruction of the right of
election itself.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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