The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV | Page 8

design which they have long since
entertained. In spite of their solemn declarations, their soothing
addresses, and the multiplied oaths which they have taken and forced
others to take, they will assassinate the king when his name will no
longer be necessary to their designs,--but not a moment sooner. They
will probably first assassinate the queen, whenever the renewed menace
of such an assassination loses its effect upon the anxious mind of an
affectionate husband. At present, the advantage which they derive from
the daily threats against her life is her only security for preserving it.
They keep their sovereign alive for the purpose of exhibiting him, like
some wild beast at a fair,--as if they had a Bajazet in a cage. They
choose to make monarchy contemptible by exposing it to derision in
the person of the most benevolent of their kings.
In my opinion their insolence appears more odious even than their
crimes. The horrors of the fifth and sixth of October were less
detestable than the festival of the fourteenth of July. There are
situations (God forbid I should think that of the 5th and 6th of October
one of them!) in which the best men may be confounded with the worst,
and in the darkness and confusion, in the press and medley of such
extremities, it may not be so easy to discriminate the one from the other.
Tho necessities created even by ill designs have their excuse. They may
be forgotten by others, when the guilty themselves do not choose to
cherish their recollection, and, by ruminating their offences, nourish
themselves, through the example of their past, to the perpetration of
future crimes. It is in the relaxation of security, it is in the expansion of
prosperity, it is in the hour of dilatation of the heart, and of its softening
into festivity and pleasure, that the real character of men is discerned. If
there is any good in them, it appears then or never. Even wolves and
tigers, when gorged with their prey, are safe and gentle. It is at such
times that noble minds give all the reins to their good nature. They
indulge their genius even to intemperance, in kindness to the afflicted,
in generosity to the conquered,--forbearing insults, forgiving injuries,
overpaying benefits. Full of dignity themselves, they respect dignity in
all, but they feel it sacred in the unhappy. But it is then, and basking in

the sunshine of unmerited fortune, that low, sordid, ungenerous, and
reptile souls swell with their hoarded poisons; it is then that they
display their odious splendor, and shine out in the full lustre of their
native villany and baseness. It is in that season that no man of sense or
honor can be mistaken for one of them. It was in such a season, for
them of political ease and security, though their people were but just
emerged from actual famine, and were ready to be plunged into a gulf
of penury and beggary, that your philosophic lords chose, with an
ostentatious pomp and luxury, to feast an incredible number of idle and
thoughtless people, collected with art and pains from all quarters of the
world. They constructed a vast amphitheatre in which they raised a
species of pillory.[3] On this pillory they set their lawful king and
queen, with an insulting figure over their heads. There they exposed
these objects of pity and respect to all good minds to the derision of an
unthinking and unprincipled multitude, degenerated even from the
versatile tenderness which marks the irregular and capricious feelings
of the populace. That their cruel insult might have nothing wanting to
complete it, they chose the anniversary of that day in which they
exposed the life of their prince to the most imminent dangers and the
vilest indignities, just following the instant when the assassins, whom
they had hired without owning, first openly took up arms against their
king, corrupted his guards, surprised his castle, butchered some of the
poor invalids of his garrison, murdered his governor, and, like wild
beasts, tore to pieces the chief magistrate of his capital city, on account
of his fidelity to his service.
Till the justice of the world is awakened, such as these will go on,
without admonition, and without provocation, to every extremity.
Those who have made the exhibition of the fourteenth of July are
capable of every evil. They do not commit crimes for their designs; but
they form designs that they may commit crimes. It is not their necessity,
but their nature, that impels them. They are modern philosophers,
which when you say of them, you express everything that is ignoble,
savage, and hard-hearted.
Besides the sure tokens which are given by the spirit of their particular
arrangements, there are some characteristic lineaments in