That approbation of what they had already done had its natural effect on the executive assassins, then in the paroxysm of their fury, as well as on their employers, then in the midst of the execution of their deliberate, cold-blooded…
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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Whilst, however, he defends these acts, he is conscious that they will appear in another light to the world.
The very selection, which he praises as a sort of justice tempering their fury, proves beyond a doubt the foresight, deliberation, and method with which this massacre was made.
In the midst of this carnage he thinks of nothing but throwing a veil over it,--which was at once to cover the guilty from punishment, and to extinguish all compassion for the sufferers.
We see that none of them condemn the occasional practice of murder,--provided it is properly applied,--provided it is kept within the bounds which each of those parties think proper to prescribe.
Indignation carried to its height commences proscriptions which fall only on the guilty, but in which error and particular passions may shortly involve the honest man.
Here was a minister tremblingly alive to his own safety, dead to that of his fellow-citizens, eager to preserve his place, and worse than indifferent about its most important duties.
The sea, agitated by a violent storm, roars long after the tempest; but everything has bounds, which ought at length to be observed.
The king had declared that he would sooner perish under their axe (he too well saw what was preparing for him) than give his sanction to the iniquitous act of proscription under which those innocent people were to be transported.
In particular, he inflamed the minds of the populace against the respectable and conscientious clergy, who became the chief objects of the massacre, and who were to him the chief objects of a malignity and rancor that one could hardly…
Under the thin veil of prediction, he strongly recommends all the abominable practices which afterwards followed.
None of the writings which have inflamed the Jacobin spirit to a savage fury ever worked up a fiercer ferment through the whole mass of the republicans in every part of France.
They endeavored to establish a distinction, by the belief of which they hoped to keep the spirit of murder safely bottled up and sealed for their own purposes, without endangering themselves by the fumes of the poison which they prepared…
They were to accomplish the purposes of order, morality, and submission to the laws, from the principles of atheism, profligacy, and sedition.
To govern the people, they must incline the people to obey.
The rights of men and the new principles of liberty and equality were very unhandy instruments for those who wished to establish a system of tranquillity and order.
The answer is,--The inducement was the same with that which led him to partake in the perpetration of all the crimes the calamitous effects of which he describes with the pen of a master,--ambition.
On the other hand, whatever escapes him, and makes against that cause, comes with the greatest weight.
History will do justice to the intentions of worthy men, but it will be on its guard against their infirmities; it will examine with great strictness of scrutiny whatever appears from a writer in favor of his own cause.
This sort of error arises from a source highly laudable; but the exactness of truth may suffer even from the feelings of virtue.
I have, for one, been born in this order of things, and would fain die in it.
It is to our opinion of the nature of Jacobinism, and of the probability, by corruption, faction, and force, of its gaining ground everywhere, that the question whom and what you are to support is to be determined.
I was therefore very eager to record a remonstrance on the journals of the House of Commons, as a caution against such a popular delusion in times to come; and this I then feared, and now am certain, is all that could be done.
One must take care that a blind partiality to some persons, and as blind an hatred to others, may not enter into our minds under a color of inflexible public principle.
When we consider of an adherence to a man which leads to his power, we must not only see what the man is, but how he stands related.
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