The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV | Page 3

iniquity
must, in the nature of things, be liable. If you lie still, you are
considered as an accomplice in the measures in which you silently
acquiesce. If you resist, you are accused of provoking irritable power to

new excesses. The conduct of a losing party never appears right: at
least, it never can possess the only infallible criterion of wisdom to
vulgar judgments,--success.
The indulgence of a sort of undefined hope, an obscure confidence, that
some lurking remains of virtue, some degree of shame, might exist in
the breasts of the oppressors of France, has been among the causes
which have helped to bring on the common ruin of king and people.
There is no safety for honest men, but by believing all possible evil of
evil men, and by acting with promptitude, decision, and steadiness on
that belief. I well remember, at every epocha of this wonderful history,
in every scene of this tragic business, that, when your sophistic
usurpers were laying down mischievous principles, and even applying
them in direct resolutions, it was the fashion to say that they never
intended to execute those declarations in their rigor. This made men
careless in their opposition, and remiss in early precaution. By holding
out this fallacious hope, the impostors deluded sometimes one
description of men, and sometimes another, so that no means of
resistance were provided against them, when they came to execute in
cruelty what they had planned in fraud.
There are cases in which a man would be ashamed not to have been
imposed on. There is a confidence necessary to human intercourse, and
without which men are often more injured by their own suspicions than
they would be by the perfidy of others. But when men whom we know
to be wicked impose upon us, we are something worse than dupes.
When we know them, their fair pretences become new motives for
distrust. There is one case, indeed, in which it would be madness not to
give the fullest credit to the most deceitful of men,--that is, when they
make declarations of hostility against us.
I find that some persons entertain other hopes, which I confess appear
more specious than those by which at first so many were deluded and
disarmed. They flatter themselves that the extreme misery brought
upon the people by their folly will at last open the eyes of the multitude,
if not of their leaders. Much the contrary, I fear. As to the leaders in
this system of imposture,--you know that cheats and deceivers never
can repent. The fraudulent have no resource but in fraud. They have no
other goods in their magazine. They have no virtue or wisdom in their
minds, to which, in a disappointment concerning the profitable effects

of fraud and cunning, they can retreat. The wearing out of an old serves
only to put them upon the invention of a new delusion. Unluckily, too,
the credulity of dupes is as inexhaustible as the invention of knaves.
They never give people possession; but they always keep them in hope.
Your state doctors do not so much as pretend that any good whatsoever
has hitherto been derived from their operations, or that the public has
prospered in any one instance under their management. The nation is
sick, very sick, by their medicines. But the charlatan tells them that
what is past cannot be helped;--they have taken the draught, and they
must wait its operation with patience;--that the first effects, indeed, are
unpleasant, but that the very sickness is a proof that the dose is of no
sluggish operation;--that sickness is inevitable in all constitutional
revolutions;--that the body must pass through pain to ease;--that the
prescriber is not an empiric who proceeds by vulgar experience, but
one who grounds his practice[1] on the sure rules of art, which cannot
possibly fail. You have read, Sir, the last manifesto, or mountebank's
bill, of the National Assembly. You see their presumption in their
promises is not lessened by all their failures in the performance.
Compare this last address of the Assembly and the present state of your
affairs with the early engagements of that body, engagements which,
not content with declaring, they solemnly deposed upon
oath,--swearing lustily, that, if they were supported, they would make
their country glorious and happy; and then judge whether those who
can write such things, or those who can bear to read them, are of
themselves to be brought to any reasonable course of thought or action.
As to the people at large, when once these miserable sheep have broken
the fold, and have got themselves loose, not from the restraint, but from
the protection, of all the principles of natural authority and legitimate
subordination, they become the natural prey of impostors. When they
have once tasted of the