The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 04 (of 12) by Edmund Burke
page 48 of 434 (11%)
page 48 of 434 (11%)
![]() | ![]() |
|
crimes; they join to run them down with the hue and cry of mankind,
which pursues their common offences; and then hope to mount into their places on the credit of the sobriety with which they show themselves disposed to carry on what may seem most plausible in the mischievous projects they pursue in common. But these men are naturally despised by those who have heads to know, and hearts that are able to go through the necessary demands of bold, wicked enterprises. They are naturally classed below the latter description, and will only be used by them as inferior instruments. They will be only the Fairfaxes of your Cromwells. If they mean honestly, why do they not strengthen the arms of honest men to support their ancient, legal, wise, and free government, given to them in the spring of 1788, against the inventions of craft and the theories of ignorance and folly? If they do not, they must continue the scorn of both parties,--sometimes the tool, sometimes the incumbrance of that whose views they approve, whose conduct they decry. These people are only made to be the sport of tyrants. They never can obtain or communicate freedom. You ask me, too, whether we have a Committee of Research. No, Sir,--God forbid! It is the necessary instrument of tyranny and usurpation; and therefore I do not wonder that it has had an early establishment under your present lords. We do not want it. Excuse my length. I have been somewhat occupied since I was honored with your letter; and I should not have been able to answer it at all, but for the holidays, which have given me means of enjoying the leisure of the country. I am called to duties which I am neither able nor willing to evade. I must soon return to my old conflict with the corruptions and oppressions which have prevailed in our Eastern dominions. I must turn myself wholly from those of France. |
|