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
Has this system provided better for the treatment becoming his high and
sacred character, and secured the King from those disgusts attached to
the necessity of employing men who are not personally agreeable? This is
a topic upon which for many reasons I could wish to be silent; but the
pretence of securing against such causes of uneasiness, is the corner-
stone of the Court party. It has however so happened, that if I were to
fix upon any one point, in which this system has been more particularly
and shamefully blameable, the effects which it has produced would justify
me in choosing for that point its tendency to degrade the personal
dignity of the Sovereign, and to expose him to a thousand contradictions
and mortifications. It is but too evident in what manner these
projectors of Royal greatness have fulfilled all their magnificent
promises. Without recapitulating all the circumstances of the reign,
every one of which is more or less a melancholy proof of the truth of
what I have advanced, let us consider the language of the Court but a few
years ago, concerning most of the persons now in the external
Administration: let me ask, whether any enemy to the personal feelings of
the Sovereign, could possibly contrive a keener instrument of
mortification, and degradation of all dignity, than almost every part and
member of the present arrangement? Nor, in the whole course of our
history, has any compliance with the will of the people ever been known
to extort from any Prince a greater contradiction to all his own declared
affections and dislikes, than that which is now adopted, in direct
opposition to every thing the people approve and desire.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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