None but dead monarchs are so much as mentioned by them, and those only to insult the living by an invidious comparison.
Edmund Burke
The Public Record
Edmund Burke was an Anglo-Irish writer, philosopher, and politician who is widely credited as the founder of the cultural and political philosophy of conservatism. Regarded as one of the most influential conservative thinkers and political writers of the 18th century, Burke spent the majority of his career in Great Britain and was elected as a member of Parliament (MP) from 1766 to 1794 in the House of Commons of Great Britain with the Whig Party. His writings played a significant role in influencing public views and opinions in both Great Britain and France following the French Revolution in 1789, and he remains a major figure in modern conservative circles.
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But in this the French Republic has followed, as they always affect to do, and have hitherto done with success, the example of the ancient Romans, who shook all governments by listening to the complaints of their subjects, and soon after…
What warehouses of masks and dominoes furnished a cover to the nakedness of their shame?
In effect, then, it was not with the men, or their principles, or their polities, that we quarrelled: our sole dislike was to the cut of their clothes.
The Parisians (and I am much of their mind) think that a thief with a crape on his visage is much worse than a barefaced knave, and that such robbers richly deserve all the penalties of all the black acts.
But, with great deference to the new diplomatic taste, we old people must retain some square-toed predilection, for the fashions of our youth.
The new habit of the Directory is so charmingly fancied, that it is impossible not to fall in love with so well-dressed a Constitution;--the costume of the sans-culotte Constitution of 1793 was absolutely insufferable.
Have they diversified the scene by the least variety, or produced the face of a single new villany?
Are they not the very same ruffians, thieves, assassins, and regicides that they were from the beginning?
They are convinced of it; and accordingly the wretches have done all they can to preserve their lives, and to secure their power; but not one step have they taken to amend the one or to make a more just use of the other.
The evil spirit by which they are possessed, though essentially a liar, is forced by the tortures of conscience to confess the truth,--to confess enough for their condemnation, but not for their amendment.
If we please, we may fill up the place of the butchered Abel; and whilst we wait the destiny of the departed brother, we may enjoy the advantages of the partnership, by entering without delay into a shop of ready-made bankruptcy and famine.
Poor Truth has had a hard work of it, with her little pickaxe.
The October politician is so full of charity and good-nature, that he supposes that these very robbers and murderers themselves are in a course of melioration: on what ground I cannot conceive, except on the long practice of every crime…
To root out these maxims, and the examples that support them, is a wise object of years of war.
It is a dreadful part of the example, that infernal malevolence has had pious apologists, who read their lectures on frailties in favor of crimes,--who abandon the weak, and court the friendship of the wicked.
It is too well exemplified in the present time, where the faults and errors of humanity, checked by the imperfect, timorous virtues, have been overpowered by those who have stopped at no crime.
This maxim is not made for a middle sort of beings, who, because they cannot be angels, ought to thwart their ambition, and not endeavor to become infernal spirits.
It establishes that dreadful maxim of Machiavel, that in great affairs men are not to be wicked by halves.
The example is ruinous in every point of view, religious, moral, civil, political.
Dreadful is the example of ruined innocence and virtue, and the completest triumph of the completest villany that ever vexed and disgraced mankind!
Whatever the politician or preacher of September or of October may think of the matter, it is a most comfortless, disheartening, desolating example.
These are things at which not vice, not crime, not folly, but wisdom, goodness, learning, justice, probity, beneficence, stand aghast.
My Lord, nothing can be learned from such examples, except the danger of being kings, queens, nobles, priests, and children, to be butchered on account of their inheritance.
The priests were punished, after they had been robbed of their all, not for their vices, but for their virtues and their piety, which made them an honor to their sacred profession, and to that nature of which we ought to be proud, since…
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