My favorite political philosopher is without a doubt Edmund Burke. The reasons why I set forth in a post which may be read here. Any day is a good day for some Burke quotes, and here are a few:
We know, and it is our pride to know, that man is by his constitution a religious animal; that atheism is against, not only our reason, but our instincts; and that it cannot prevail long. But if, in the moment of riot, and in a drunken delirium from the hot spirit drawn out of the alembic of hell, which in France is now so furiously boiling, we should uncover our nakedness, by throwing off that Christian religion which has hitherto been our boast and comfort, and one great source of civilization amongst us, and amongst many other nations, we are apprehensive (being well aware that the mind will not endure a void) that some uncouth, pernicious, and degrading superstition might take place of it.
“For I must do it justice; it was a complete system, full of coherence and consistency, well digested and well composed in all its parts. It was a machine of wise and deliberate contrivance, as well fitted for the oppression, impoverishment and degradation of a people, and the debasement of human nature itself, as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man.” (Burke on the Irish Penal Laws)
It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the Queen of France, then the Dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in—glittering like the morning star, full of life, and splendor, and joy. Oh! what a Revolution! And what a heart must I have to contemplate without emotion that elevation and that fall! Little did I dream when she added titles of veneration to those of enthusiastic, distant, respectful love, that she should ever be obliged to carry the sharp antidote against disgrace concealed in that bosom; little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor, and of cavaliers. I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever.
The effect of liberty to individuals is, that they may do what they please: we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations.
Hypocrisy, of course, delights in the most sublime speculations; for, never intending to go beyond speculation, it costs nothing to have it magnificent.
But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint.
Difficulty is a severe instructor, set over us by the supreme ordinance of a parental Guardian and Legislator, who knows us better than we know ourselves, as he loves us better too. Pater ipse colendi haud facilem esse viam voluit. He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.
Circumstances (which with some gentlemen pass for nothing) give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing colour, and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind.
A man full of warm, speculative benevolence may wish his society otherwise constituted than he finds it, but a good patriot and a true politician always considers how he shall make the most of the existing materials of his country. A disposition to preserve and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman. Everything else is vulgar in the conception, perilous in the execution.
Laws, like houses, lean on one another.
It is a general popular error to suppose the loudest complainers for the publick to be the most anxious for its welfare.
Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.
Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.
Tyrants seldom want pretexts.
When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.
All who have ever written on government are unanimous, that among a people generally corrupt, liberty cannot long exist.
Donald R. McClarey
Paul Zummo
Greatest political philosopher – and the wittiest.
Indeed Paul! Burke’s agility with the English language puts us all to shame!
I am sorry, but a lot of what Burke said is questionable to say the least. He complained about the Penal Laws, but failed to see they were an integral part of those “property rights” he valued so much, and which someone managed to convince Jefferson to replace with “[the right to] the pursuit of happiness]” – to the great advantage of the power and consistency of the Declaration. In the case of English and Scottish history, Proudhon really was right: “La propriete’, c’est le vol” – the English and Scottish aristocracies had grown rich on the plunder of the Church (in violation of the founding statutes of both countries) and, in the case of Scotland, of the destruction of their own Highland peasantry, the “Highland clearances”. (The corresponding English process, the “enclosures”, was slower and lasted over many centuries.) Burke did not want to face the dirty little secret that everyone knew, and nobody mentioned till Cobbett, a generation later, came to shout it from the rooftops – that the sacred rights of property had been built on the plunder of the Church, of the rural communities, and even of the London guilds! (Fact. The last act of theft the loathsome Henry VIII unloosed before his lonely and repulsive death was the destruction of the Guilds of the City of London. Even he could not find any religious excuses for this, but he sent round his mercenaries anyway.)
Even worse is that ridiculous passage about the Queen of France you uncritically quote. That is pure wartime rhetoric, completely devoid not only of fact but even of a decent adhesion to contemporary climate. For a start, Burke neglects to mention a simple word that makes all his special pleading so much nonsense: Varennes. At a time of war, the French Royal Family made a deliberate and conscious attempt to go over to the enemy. Sure they had their excuses. So had Benedict Arnold; and if the Continentals had caught Benedict Arnold, would have had any objection to his ending up a rope-weight? Let alone unleash such floods of silly sentimentality? But when it comes to that – to invoking the spirit of the Middle Ages, of loyalty and respect to ladies, of feudal good behaviour, in eighteenth-century France! One really doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry. The French Crown had hollowed out all those things from the inside over centuries of deliberate political action whose constant underhandedness and occasional criminality shows that they realized that they were going against law and right; reducing nobility to a rich but hollow puppet show, degree to oppression and law to personal caprice. And let us remember that the “Enlightenment” of Voltaire and d’Holbach and Diderot and the rest – read some Diderot or some Voltaire, see how much respect for ladies rested in their rational breasts! – was a court passion, and that Voltaire himself had long been a court favourite till his head had grown too big for the place (an unfortunate side-effect of immense commercial success covering all of Europe; suddenly he saw himself as more respected and admired than his King). To invoke the values of feudalism in the age of “enlightenment” is so self-evidently hollow as to leave me no doubt that Burke, in that passage, was conscious of the purely rhetorical and fraudulent operation he was carrying out.
I have a few things more to say, but I don’t want to take over your whole blog.
Well Fabio we will have to agree to disagree in regard to Burke. The penal laws had nothing to do with property rights properly understood and Burke comprehended that. Burke was the best type of reformer who built upon the foundation of a society, and did not seek to scrap all that had gone before and start from scratch. I think that Burke was completely right in his scepticism of the French Revolution and history supports this conclusion. The French revolutionaries were the true enemies of France and not their victims, among whom I include the hapless King and Queen. France needed reform; it did not need cracked brained idiots building parchment Cloud Cuckoolands who paved the way for the Terror and the military dictatorship of Napoleon.