As usual, they found their portion not equal to their estimate (or perhaps to the public estimate) of their own worth.
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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Men of talent began to compare, in the partition of the common stock of public prosperity, the proportions of the dividends with the merits of the claimants.
General wealth loosened morals, relaxed vigilance, and increased presumption.
Knowledge, which in the two last centuries either did not exist at all, or existed solidly on right principles and in chosen hands, was now diffused, weakened, and perverted.
A false philosophy passed from academies into courts; and the great themselves were infected with the theories which conducted to their ruin.
In one part of the society it caused laxity and debility; in the other it produced bold spirits and dark designs.
I knew, indeed, that this prosperity contained in itself the seeds of its own danger.
In the long series of ages which have furnished the matter of history, never was so beautiful and so august a spectacle presented to the moral eye as Europe afforded the day before the Revolution in France.
But if it be wholly declined from its perpendicular, if the cement is loose and incoherent, if the stones are scaling with every change of the weather, and the whole toppling on our heads, what matter is it whether we are crushed by a…
Whatever we may pretend, there is always more in the soundness of the materials than in the fashion of the work.
As the wisdom of men mates such institutions, the folly of men destroys them.
I should not be inclined to retract these praises upon any of the ordinary lapses into which human infirmity will fall; they might still stand, though some of their conclusums should taste of the prejudices of country or of faction…
If they have a mind to destroy themselves, they may put their advocates to silence and their advisers to shame.
What can be done against the magnanimous resolution of the great to accomplish the degradation and the ruin of their own character and situation?
It is not in my power to prevent the grand patron of the Reformed Church, if he chooses it, from annulling the Calvinistic sabbath, and establishing the décadi of atheism in all his states.
Am I blamable in recommending virtue and religion as the true foundation of all monarchies, because the protector of the three religions of the Westphalian arrangement, to ingratiate himself with the Republic of Philosophy, shall abolish…
How can I help it, if this royal propagandist will preach the doctrine of the Rights of Men?
How can I help it, if this high-minded prince will subscribe to the invectives which the regicides have made against all kings, and particularly against himself?
He may sacrifice the royalists of France, whom he had called to his standard, as a salutary example to those who shall adhere to their native sovereign, or shall confide in any other who undertakes the cause of oppressed kings and of loyal…
I defended that great potentate for associating in a grand alliance for the preservation of the old governments of Europe; but he puts me to silence by delivering up all those governments (his own virtually included) to the new system of…
Such a monarch may destroy one republic because it had a king at its head, and he may balance this extraordinary act by founding another republic that has cut off the head of its king.
Whilst I, or any other poor, puny, private sophist, was defending the Declaration of Pilnitz, his Majesty might refute me by the Treaty of Basle.
A great Northern potentate, for instance, is able in one moment, and with one bold stroke of his diplomatic pen, to efface all the volumes which I could write in a century, or which the most laborious publicists of Germany ever carried to…
If they please, they are more powerful advocates against themselves than a thousand scribblers like me can be in their favor.
I may be refuted and brought to shame by the most convincing of all refutations, a practical refutation.
Politicians like Edmund Burke
