France has not sacrificed her virtue to her interest; but she has abandoned her interest, that she might prostitute her virtue.
Edmund Burke: “France has not sacrificed her virtue to her interest; but she has abandoned her interest, that she might prostitute her…”
Editor's note · Context
Burke argues that France, in its revolutionary fervor, not only failed to prioritize its national interest but actively compromised its moral integrity.
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But the king of Great Britain obeys no other person; all other persons are individually, and collectively too, under him, and owe to him a legal obedience.
This idea of a liberal descent inspires us with a sense of habitual native dignity, which prevents that upstart insolence almost inevitably adhering to and disgracing those who are the first acquirers of any distinction.
But an absurd theory on one side of a question forms no justification for alleging a false fact or promulgating mischievous maxims on the other.
They look on the frame of their commonwealth, such as it stands, to be of inestimable value; and they conceive the undisturbed succession of the crown to be a pledge of the stability and perpetuity of all the other members of our…





