Thoughts on the Present Discontents, and SpeechesBurke, Edmund
General
Thoughts on the Present Discontents, and Speeches
Burke, Edmund
Great Britain -- Politics and government -- 1760-1789
Cunning men are here apt to break in, and, without directly controverting
the principle, to raise objections from the difficulty under which the
Sovereign labours to distinguish the genuine voice and sentiments of his
people from the clamour of a faction, by which it is so easily
counterfeited. The nation, they say, is generally divided into parties,
with views and passions utterly irreconcilable. If the King should put
his affairs into the hands of any one of them, he is sure to disgust the
rest; if he select particular men from among them all, it is a hazard
that he disgusts them all. Those who are left out, however divided
before, will soon run into a body of opposition, which, being a
collection of many discontents into one focus, will without doubt be hot
and violent enough. Faction will make its cries resound through the
nation, as if the whole were in an uproar, when by far the majority, and
much the better part, will seem for awhile, as it were, annihilated by
the quiet in which their virtue and moderation incline them to enjoy the
blessings of Government. Besides that, the opinion of the mere vulgar is
a miserable rule even with regard to themselves, on account of their
violence and instability. So that if you were to gratify them in their
humour to-day, that very gratification would be a ground of their
dissatisfaction on the next. Now as all these rules of public opinion
are to be collected with great difficulty, and to be applied with equal
uncertainty as to the effect, what better can a King of England do than
to employ such men as he finds to have views and inclinations most
conformable to his own, who are least infected with pride and self-will,
and who are least moved by such popular humours as are perpetually
traversing his designs, and disturbing his service; trusting that when he
means no ill to his people he will be supported in his appointments,
whether he chooses to keep or to change, as his private judgment or his
pleasure leads him? He will find a sure resource in the real weight and
influence of the Crown, when it is not suffered to become an instrument
in the hands of a faction.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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