Edmund Burke

What were the enormities of the infant king, whom they caused, by lingering tortures, to perish in their dungeon, and whom if at last they dispatched by poison, it was in that detestable crime the only act of mercy they have ever shown?

What were the crimes of those crowds of matrons and virgins of condition, whom they mas sacred, with their juries of blood, in prisons and on scaffolds?

For which of her vices did they put to death the mildest of all human creatures, the Duchess of Biron?

For which of the vices of that pattern of benevolence, of piety, and of all the virtues, did they put her to death?

If he does not carry quite another memory of that transaction in the inmost recesses of his heart, he is unworthy to reign, he is unworthy to live.

If he learns this lesson from such an object, and from such teachers, the man may remain, but the king is deposed.

Is this a lesson of moderation to a descendant of Maria Theresa, drawn from the fate of the daughter of that incomparable woman and sovereign?

Was she a person so very ferocious and cruel, as, by the example of her death, to frighten us into common humanity?

What were the abominations of Malesherbes, that other excellent magistrate, whose sixty years of uniform virtue was acknowledged, in the very act of his murder, by the judicial butchers who condemned him?

My feeble nature might shrink, though theirs did not, from the proof; but my reason and my ambition tell me that it would be a good bargain to purchase their merits with their fate.

Many of them, I am sure, were such as I should be proud indeed to be able to compare myself with, in knowledge, in integrity, and in every other virtue.

I do not know that any time or any country has furnished more splendid examples of every virtue, domestic and public.

I must do justice to suffering honor, generosity, and integrity.

Is it, then, true, that this unfortunate monarch drew his punishment upon himself by his want of moderation, and his oppressing the liberties of which he had found his people in possession?

As to the example to be learnt from the murder of Louis the Sixteenth, if a lesson to kings is not derived from his fate, I do not know whence it can come.

What lesson does it give of moderation to the Emperor, whose predecessor never put one man to death after a general rebellion of the Low Countries, that the Regicides never spared man, woman, or child, whom they but suspected of dislike to…

I desire to know whether his Holiness is to learn not to massacre his subjects, nor to waste and destroy such beautiful countries as that of Avignon, lest he should call to their assistance that great deliverer of nations, Jourdan…

But the world will not be much mended by turning wars from unprofitable and speculative to practical and lucrative, whether the liberty or the repose of mankind is regarded.

They have murdered him, and have divided his kingdom as a spoil; but they who are the guilty are not they who furnish the example.

Our best securities for freedom have been obtained from princes who were either warlike, or prodigal, or both.

But is it permitted to ask what security it affords to the liberty of the subject, that the prince is pacific or frugal?

But to descend from the author's generalities a little nearer to meaning, the security given to liberty is this,--"that governments will have learned not to precipitate themselves into embarrassments by speculative wars.

I do not like to leave all the power to my adversary, and to secure nothing to myself but the untimely wisdom that is taught by the consequences of folly.

I never believed the masters; nor do I now find myself disposed to give credit to the disciple.

They, it seems, were right; and if they were right a little earlier than we are, it only shows that they exceeded us in sagacity.