If more lives are lost in this war than necessity requires, they are lost by misconduct or mistake: but if the hostility be just, the error is to be corrected, the war is not to be abandoned.
Edmund Burke: “If more lives are lost in this war than necessity requires, they are lost by misconduct or mistake: but if the hostility…”
Editor's note · Context
Burke contends that unnecessary loss of life in war results from errors, but just wars must be pursued to correct those errors.
Share
More from Edmund Burke
Do they mean to attaint and disable backwards all the kings that have reigned before the Revolution, and consequently to stain the throne of England with the blot of a continual usurpation?
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.
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.
Ill would our ancestors at the Revolution have deserved their fame for wisdom, if they had found no security for their freedom, but in rendering their government feeble in its operations and precarious in its tenure,--if they had been able…





