The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV | Page 4

flattery of knaves, they can no longer endure
reason, which appears to them only in the form of censure and reproach.
Great distress has never hitherto taught, and whilst the world lasts it
never will teach, wise lessons to any part of mankind. Men are as much
blinded by the extremes of misery as by the extremes of prosperity.
Desperate situations produce desperate councils and desperate
measures. The people of France, almost generally, have been taught to
look for other resources than those which can be derived from order,

frugality, and industry. They are generally armed; and they are made to
expect much from the use of arms. _Nihil non arrogant armis._ Besides
this, the retrograde order of society has something flattering to the
dispositions of mankind. The life of adventurers, gamesters, gypsies,
beggars, and robbers is not unpleasant. It requires restraint to keep men
from falling into that habit. The shifting tides of fear and hope, the
flight and pursuit, the peril and escape, the alternate famine and feast of
the savage and the thief, after a time; render all course of slow, steady,
progressive, unvaried occupation, and the prospect only of a limited
mediocrity at the end of long labor, to the last degree tame, languid,
and insipid. Those who have been once intoxicated with power, and
have derived any kind of emolument from it, even though but for one
year, never can willingly abandon it. They may be distressed in the
midst of all their power; but they will never look to anything but power
for their relief. When did distress ever oblige a prince to abdicate his
authority? And what effect will it have upon those who are made to
believe themselves a people of princes?
The more active and stirring part of the lower orders having got
government and the distribution of plunder into their hands, they will
use its resources in each municipality to form a body of adherents.
These rulers and their adherents will be strong enough to overpower the
discontents of those who have not been able to assert their share of the
spoil. The unfortunate adventurers in the cheating lottery of plunder
will probably be the least sagacious or the most inactive and irresolute
of the gang. If, on disappointment, they should dare to stir, they will
soon be suppressed as rebels and mutineers by their brother rebels.
Scantily fed for a while with the offal of plunder, they will drop off by
degrees; they will be driven out of sight and out of thought; and they
will be left to perish obscurely, like rats, in holes and corners.
From the forced repentance of invalid mutineers and disbanded thieves
you can hope for no resource. Government itself, which ought to
constrain the more bold and dexterous of these robbers, is their
accomplice. Its arms, its treasures, its all are in their hands. Judicature,
which above all things should awe them, is their creature and their
instrument. Nothing seems to me to render your internal situation more
desperate than this one circumstance of the state of your judicature.
Many days are not passed since we have seen a set of men brought

forth by your rulers for a most critical function. Your rulers brought
forth a set of men, steaming from the sweat and drudgery, and all black
with the smoke and soot, of the forge of confiscation and
robbery,--_ardentis massæ fuligine lippos_,--a set of men brought forth
from the trade of hammering arms of proof, offensive and defensive, in
aid of the enterprises, and for the subsequent protection, of
housebreakers, murderers, traitors, and malefactors,--men, who had
their minds seasoned with theories perfectly conformable to their
practice, and who had always laughed at possession and prescription,
and defied all the fundamental maxims of jurisprudence. To the horror
and stupefaction of all the honest part of this nation, and indeed of all
nations who are spectators, we have seen, on the credit of those very
practices and principles, and to carry them further into effect, these
very men placed on the sacred seat of justice in the capital city of your
late kingdom. We see that in future you are to be destroyed with more
form and regularity. This is not peace: it is only the introduction of a
sort of discipline in their hostility. Their tyranny is complete in their
justice; and their lanterne is not half so dreadful as their court.
One would think, that, out of common decency, they would have given
you men who had not been in the habit of trampling upon law and
justice in the Assembly, neutral men, or men apparently neutral, for
judges, who are to dispose of your lives and fortunes.
Cromwell, when he attempted to legalize his power, and to settle his
conquered country in