Under pretence, therefore, of relieving the people, and of exercising the sovereignty in their right, at one stroke they abolished all the duties and taxes, they shut up all the treasuries.
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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We have acted, we have spoken, like masters; and from that time we have found the Flemings nothing but jugglers, who made the grimace of liberty for money, or slaves, who in their hearts cursed their new tyrants.
No! despotism and anarchy, these are the benefits which we have transplanted into their soil.
Even slaves do not suffer themselves to be seduced by such artifices; and if they have not the strength to resist, they have at least the sense to know how to appreciate the value of such an attempt.
It is not by those means, that a new-born republic, a people who know not yet the elements of republican governments, can be united to us.
No: it is not by means which belong only to thieves and despots that the foundations of liberty can be laid in an enslaved country.
Nothing better than another kind of despotism has been seen in the revolutionary power.
Philosophy does not inspire by violence, nor by seduction; nor is it the sword that begets love of liberty.
No: a revolution in ideas and in prejudices is not made with that rapidity; it moves gradually; it does not escalade.
Doubtless these operations were founded on principles; but those principles ought to have had the consent of the Belgians, before they were carried into practice; otherwise they necessarily became our most cruel enemies.
How could they believe themselves free and sovereign, when we made them take such an oath as we thought fit, as a test to give them the right of voting?
We have given those people a will: that is to say, we have more than ever alienated them from liberty.
In general, we have always considered our own opinions and our own intentions rather than the people whose cause we defend.
Without doubt, good intentions made the majority of the Assembly adopt it; they would plant the tree of liberty in a foreign soil, under the shade of a people already free.
They believed that they could generally establish it by exciting the governed against the governors, in letting the people see the facility and the advantages of such insurrections.
Without reciprocal confidence between the soldier and the general, there can be no army, no victory, especially in a free government.
Turenne, in our time, would have carried his head to the scaffold; for he was sometimes beat: but the reason why he more frequently conquered was, that his discipline was severe; it was, that his soldiers, confiding in his talents, never…
The first discerns treason in every danger; the second, always placed between the necessity of conquest and the image of the scaffold, dares not raise himself to bold conception, and those heights of courage which electrify an army and…
For the spirit of distrust makes the soldier suspicious, and intimidates the general.
Does not such a disorder destroy all the respect that is due to superiors, and all the mutual confidence without which success cannot be hoped for?
How could they expect that there should exist any discipline, any subordination, when even in the camp they permit motions, censures, and denunciations of officers and of generals?
Who could, however, doubt the frightful evils that were occasioned in our armies by that doctrine of anarchy which, under the shadow of equality of right, would establish equality of fact?
It is, indeed, a system which can only answer the purposes of robbers and murderers.
Such partisans of a republic amongst us as may not have the worst intentions will see that the principles, the plans, the manners, the morals, and the whole system of France is altogether as adverse to the formation and duration of any…
We see before our eyes the absurdity of thinking to establish order upon principles of confusion, or with the materials and instruments of rebellion to build up a solid and stable government.
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