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
It is not more the duty than it is the interest of a Prince to aim at
giving tranquillity to his Government. If those who advise him may have
an interest in disorder and confusion. If the opinion of the people is
against them, they will naturally wish that it should have no prevalence.
Here it is that the people must on their part show themselves sensible of
their own value. Their whole importance, in the first instance, and
afterwards their whole freedom, is at stake. Their freedom cannot long
survive their importance. Here it is that the natural strength of the
kingdom, the great peers, the leading landed gentlemen, the opulent
merchants and manufacturers, the substantial yeomanry, must interpose, to
rescue their Prince, themselves, and their posterity.
We are at present at issue upon this point. We are in the great crisis
of this contention, and the part which men take, one way or other, will
serve to discriminate their characters and their principles. Until the
matter is decided, the country will remain in its present confusion. For
while a system of Administration is attempted, entirely repugnant to the
genius of the people, and not conformable to the plan of their
Government, everything must necessarily be disordered for a time, until
this system destroys the constitution, or the constitution gets the
better of this system.
There is, in my opinion, a peculiar venom and malignity in this political
distemper beyond any that I have heard or read of. In former lines the
projectors of arbitrary Government attacked only the liberties of their
country, a design surely mischievous enough to have satisfied a mind of
the most unruly ambition. But a system unfavourable to freedom may be so
formed as considerably to exalt the grandeur of the State, and men may
find in the pride and splendour of that prosperity some sort of
consolation for the loss of their solid privileges. Indeed, the increase
of the power of the State has often been urged by artful men, as a
pretext for some abridgment of the public liberty. But the scheme of the
junto under consideration not only strikes a palsy into every nerve of
our free constitution, but in the same degree benumbs and stupefies the
whole executive power, rendering Government in all its grand operations
languid, uncertain, ineffective, making Ministers fearful of attempting,
and incapable of executing, any useful plan of domestic arrangement, or
of foreign politics. It tends to produce neither the security of a free
Government, nor the energy of a Monarchy that is absolute. Accordingly,
the Crown has dwindled away in proportion to the unnatural and turgid
growth of this excrescence on the Court.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account