The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV | Page 2

Jew brokers, and set in action by
shameless women of the lowest condition, by keepers of hotels, taverns,
and brothels, by pert apprentices, by clerks, shop-boys, hair-dressers,
fiddlers, and dancers on the stage, (who, in such a commonwealth as
yours, will in future overbear, as already they have overborne, the sober
incapacity of dull, uninstructed men, of useful, but laborious
occupations,) can never be put into any shape that must not be both
disgraceful and destructive. The whole of this project, even if it were
what it pretends to be, and was not in reality the dominion, through that
disgraceful medium, of half a dozen, or perhaps fewer, intriguing
politicians, is so mean, so low-minded, so stupid a contrivance, in point
of wisdom, as well as so perfectly detestable for its wickedness, that I
must always consider the correctives which might make it in any
degree practicable to be so many new objections to it.
In that wretched state of things, some are afraid that the authors of your
miseries may be led to precipitate their further designs by the hints they
may receive from the very arguments used to expose the absurdity of
their system, to mark the incongruity of its parts, and its inconsistency
with their own principles,--and that your masters may be led to render
their schemes more consistent by rendering them more mischievous.
Excuse the liberty which your indulgence authorizes me to take, when I
observe to you that such apprehensions as these would prevent all
exertion of our faculties in this great cause of mankind.
A rash recourse to force is not to be justified in a state of real weakness.
Such attempts bring on disgrace, and in their failure discountenance
and discourage more rational endeavors. But reason is to be hazarded,
though it may be perverted by craft and sophistry; for reason can suffer
no loss nor shame, nor can it impede any useful plan of future policy.
In the unavoidable uncertainty as to the effect, which attends on every
measure of human prudence, nothing seems a surer antidote to the
poison of fraud than its detection. It is true, the fraud may be
swallowed after this discovery, and perhaps even swallowed the more
greedily for being a detected fraud. Men sometimes make a point of
honor not to be disabused; and they had rather fall into an hundred

errors than confess one. But, after all, when neither our principles nor
our dispositions, nor, perhaps, our talents, enable us to encounter
delusion with delusion, we must use our best reason to those that ought
to be reasonable creatures, and to take our chance for the event. We
cannot act on these anomalies in the minds of men. I do not conceive
that the persons who have contrived these things can be made much the
better or the worse for anything which can be said to them. They are
reason-proof. Here and there, some men, who were at first carried away
by wild, good intentions, may be led, when their first fervors are abated,
to join in a sober survey of the schemes into which they had been
deluded. To those only (and I am sorry to say they are not likely to
make a large description) we apply with any hope. I may speak it upon
an assurance almost approaching to absolute knowledge, that nothing
has been done that has not been contrived from the beginning, even
before the States had assembled. _Nulla nova mihi res inopinave
surgit._ They are the same men and the same designs that they were
from the first, though varied in their appearance. It was the very same
animal that at first crawled about in the shape of a caterpillar that you
now see rise into the air and expand his wings to the sun.
Proceeding, therefore, as we are obliged to proceed,--that is, upon an
hypothesis that we address rational men,--can false political principles
be more effectually exposed than by demonstrating that they lead to
consequences directly inconsistent with and subversive of the
arrangements grounded upon them? If this kind of demonstration is not
permitted, the process of reasoning called deductio ad absurdum,
which even the severity of geometry does not reject, could not be
employed at all in legislative discussions. One of our strongest
weapons against folly acting with authority would be lost.
You know, Sir, that even the virtuous efforts of your patriots to prevent
the ruin of your country have had this very turn given to them. It has
been said here, and in France too, that the reigning usurpers would not
have carried their tyranny to such destructive lengths, if they had not
been stimulated and provoked to it by the acrimony of your opposition.
There is a dilemma to which every opposition to successful