The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 04 (of 12) eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 472 pages of information about The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 04 (of 12).

The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 04 (of 12) eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 472 pages of information about The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 04 (of 12).
of its Constitution, even at some expense of blood, might be seen without much disapprobation.  No confusion could be feared in such an enterprise; because the establishment to be reformed was itself a state of confusion.  A king without authority; nobles without union or subordination; a people without arts, industry, commerce, or liberty; no order within, no defence without; no effective public force, but a foreign force, which entered, a naked country at will, and disposed of everything at pleasure.  Here was a state of things which seemed to invite, and might perhaps justify, bold enterprise and desperate experiment.  But in what manner was this chaos brought into order?  The means were as striking to the imagination as satisfactory to the reason and soothing to the moral sentiments.  In contemplating that change, humanity has everything to rejoice and to glory in,—­nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to suffer.  So far as it has gone, it probably is the most pure and defecated public good which ever has been conferred on mankind.  We have seen anarchy and servitude at once removed; a throne strengthened for the protection of the people, without trenching on their liberties; all foreign cabal banished, by changing the crown from elective to hereditary; and what was a matter of pleasing wonder, we have seen a reigning king, from an heroic love to his country, exerting himself with all the toil, the dexterity, the management, the intrigue, in favor of a family of strangers, with which ambitious men labor for the aggrandizement of their own.  Ten millions of men in a way of being freed gradually, and therefore safely to themselves and the state, not from civil or political chains, which, bad as they are, only fetter the mind, but from substantial personal bondage.  Inhabitants of cities, before without privileges, placed in the consideration which belongs to that improved and connecting situation of social life.  One of the most proud, numerous, and fierce bodies of nobility and gentry ever known in the world arranged only in the foremost rank of free and generous citizens.  Not one man incurred loss or suffered degradation.  All, from the king to the day-laborer, were improved in their condition.  Everything was kept in its place and order; but in that place and order everything was bettered.  To add to this happy wonder, this unheard-of conjunction of wisdom and fortune, not one drop of blood was spilled; no treachery; no outrage; no system of slander more cruel than the sword; no studied insults on religion, morals, or manners; no spoil; no confiscation; no citizen beggared; none imprisoned; none exiled:  the whole was effected with a policy, a discretion, an unanimity and secrecy, such as have never been before known on any occasion; but such wonderful conduct was reserved for this glorious conspiracy in favor of the true and genuine rights and interests of men.  Happy people, if they know to proceed as they have begun!  Happy prince, worthy to begin with splendor or to close with glory a race of patriots and of kings, and to leave

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The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 04 (of 12) from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.