Search -
A Letter From Mr. Burke, to a Member of the National Assembly
A Letter From Mr Burke to a Member of the National Assembly Author:Edmund Burke Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: A rafh recourse to force is not to be juftified in a ftate of real weaknefs. Such attempts bring on difgrace; and, in their failure, difcounte- nance and difcour... more »age more rational endeavours, But reqfon is to be hazarded, though it may be perverted by craft and fophiftry; for reafon can fuffer no lofs nor fhame, nor can it impede any ufeful plan of future policy. In the unavoidable uncertainty, as to the effect, which attends on every meafure of human prudence, nothing feems a furer antidote to the poifon of fraud than its detection. It is true the fraud may be fwal- lowed after this difcovery; and perhaps even fwallowed the more greedily for being a detected fraud. Men fometimes make a point of honour .not to be difabufed ; and they had rather fall into an hundred errors than confefs one. But after all,—when neither our principles nor our dif- pofitions, nor, perhaps, our talents, enable us to encounter delufion with delufion, we muft ufc our beft reafon to thofe that ought to be reafbn- able creatures, and to take our chance for the event. We cannot act on thefe anomalies in the minds of men. I do not conceive that the perfons who have- contrived thefe things can be made much the better or the worfe for any thing which can be faid to them. They B 3 are chapter{Section 4are reafbn proof. Here and there, fome men, who were at firft carried away by wild good intentions, may be led, when their firft fervors are abated, to join in a fober furvey of the fchemes into which they have been deluded. To thofe only (and I am forry to fay they are not likely to make a large defcription) we apply with any hope. I may fpeak it upon an affurance almoft approaching to abfolute knowledge, that nothing has been done that has not been contrived from the beginning, even before the ftates had aflem...« less