The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV | Page 7

a nation which will not so
much as give the salutation of peace (_Salam_) to any of us, nor make
any pact with any Christian nation beyond a truce,--if this be done in
favor of the Turk, shall it be thought either impolitic or unjust or
uncharitable to employ the same power to rescue from captivity a
virtuous monarch, (by the courtesy of Europe considered as Most
Christian,) who, after an intermission of one hundred and seventy-five
years, had called together the States of his kingdom to reform abuses,
to establish a free government, and to strengthen his throne,--a monarch
who, at the very outset, without force, even without solicitation, had
given to his people such a Magna Charta of privileges as never was
given by any king to any subjects? Is it to be tamely borne by kings
who love their subjects, or by subjects who love their kings, that this
monarch, in the midst of these gracious acts, was insolently and cruelly
torn from his palace by a gang of traitors and assassins, and kept in
close prison to this very hour, whilst his royal name and sacred
character were used for the total ruin of those whom the laws had
appointed him to protect?
The only offence of this unhappy monarch towards his people was his
attempt, under a monarchy, to give them a free Constitution. For this,
by an example hitherto unheard of in the world, he has been deposed. It
might well disgrace sovereigns to take part with a deposed tyrant. It
would suppose in them a vicious sympathy. But not to make a common
cause with a just prince, dethroned by traitors and rebels, who proscribe,
plunder, confiscate, and in every way cruelly oppress their
fellow-citizens, in my opinion is to forget what is due to the honor and

to the rights of all virtuous and legal government.
I think the king of France to be as much an object both of policy and
compassion as the Grand Seignior or his states. I do not conceive that
the total annihilation of France (if that could be effected) is a desirable
thing to Europe, or even to this its rival nation. Provident patriots did
not think it good for Rome that even Carthage should be quite
destroyed; and he was a wise Greek, wise for the general Grecian
interests, as well as a brave Lacedæmonian enemy and generous
conqueror, who did not wish, by the destruction of Athens, to pluck out
the other eye of Greece.
However, Sir, what I have here said of the interference of foreign
princes is only the opinion of a private individual, who is neither the
representative of any state nor the organ of any party, but who thinks
himself bound to express his own sentiments with freedom and energy
in a crisis of such importance to the whole human race.
I am not apprehensive, that, in speaking freely on the subject of the
king and queen of France, I shall accelerate (as you fear) the execution
of traitorous designs against them. You are of opinion, Sir, that the
usurpers may, and that they will, gladly lay hold of any pretext to throw
off the very name of a king: assuredly, I do not wish ill to your king;
but better for him not to live (he does not reign) than to live the passive
instrument of tyranny and usurpation.
I certainly meant to show, to the best of my power, that the existence of
such an executive officer in such a system of republic as theirs is
absurd in the highest degree. But in demonstrating this, to them, at least,
I can have made no discovery. They only held out the royal name to
catch those Frenchmen to whom the name of king is still venerable.
They calculate the duration of that sentiment; and when they find it
nearly expiring, they will not trouble themselves with excuses for
extinguishing the name, as they have the thing. They used it as a sort of
navel-string to nourish their unnatural offspring from the bowels of
royalty itself. Now that the monster can purvey for its own subsistence,
it will only carry the mark about it, as a token of its having torn the
womb it came from. Tyrants seldom want pretexts. Fraud is the ready
minister of injustice; and whilst the currency of false pretence and
sophistic reasoning was expedient to their designs, they were under no
necessity of drawing upon me to furnish them with that coin. But

pretexts and sophisms have had their day, and have done their work.
The usurpation no longer seeks plausibility: it trusts to power.
Nothing that I can say, or that you can say, will hasten them, by a
single hour, in the execution of a