You began ill, because you began by despising everything that belonged to you.
Edmund Burke: “You began ill, because you began by despising everything that belonged to you.”
Editor's note · Context
In his critique of the French Revolution, Burke asserts that its flawed beginning stemmed from a contempt for its own national heritage.
Share
More from Edmund Burke
All your sophisters cannot produce anything better adapted to preserve a rational and manly freedom than the course that we have pursued, who have chosen our nature rather than our speculations, our breasts rather than our inventions, for…
The House of Lords, for instance, is not morally competent to dissolve the House of Commons,--no, nor even to dissolve itself, nor to abdicate, if it would, its portion in the legislature of the kingdom.
Who could flatter himself that these men, suddenly, and as it were by enchantment, snatched from the humblest rank of subordination, would not be intoxicated with their unprepared greatness?
As he is not to obey us, but we are to obey the law in him, our Constitution has made no sort of provision towards rendering him, as a servant, in any degree responsible.





