Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke [212]
and integrity. I do not know, that any time, or any country, has furnished more splendid examples of every virtue, domestic and public. I do not enter into the councils of Providence: but, humanly speaking, many of these nobles and men of property, from whose disastrous fate we are, it seems, to learn a general softening of character, and a revision of our social situations and duties, appear to me full as little deserving of that fate, as the author, whoever he is, can be. Many of them, I am sure, were such, as I should be proud indeed to be able to compare myself with, in knowledge, in integrity, and in every other virtue. My feeble nature might shrink, though theirs did not, from the proof; but my reason and my ambition tell me, that it would be a good bargain to purchase their merits with their fate.
For which of his vices did that great magistrate, D'Espremenil, lose his fortune and his head? What were the abominations of Malesherbes, that other excellent magistrate, whose sixty years of uniform virtue was acknowledged, in the very act of his murder, by the judicial butchers, who condemned him? On account of what misdemeanors was he robbed of his property, and slaughtered with two generations of his offspring; and the remains of the third race, with a refinement of cruelty, and lest they should appear to reclaim the property forfeited by the virtues of their ancestor, confounded in an hospital with the thousands of those unhappy foundling infants, who are abandoned, without relation, and without name, by the wretchedness or by the profligacy of their parents?
Is the fate of the queen of France to produce this softening of character? Was she a person so very ferocious and cruel as, by the example of her death, to frighten us into common humanity? Is there no way to teach the emperor a softening of character, and a review of his social situation and duty, but his consent, by an infamous accord with regicide, to drive a second coach with the Austrian arms through the streets of Paris, along which, after a series of preparatory horrors, exceeding the atrocities of the bloody execution itself, the glory of the imperial race had been carried to an ignominious death? Is this a lesson of MODERATION to a descendant of Maria Theresa, drawn from the fate of the daughter of that incomparable woman and sovereign? If he learns this lesson from such an object, and from such teachers, the man may remain, but the king is deposed. If he does not carry quite another memory of that transaction in the inmost recesses of his heart, he is unworthy to reign; he is unworthy to live. In the chronicle of disgrace he will have but this short tale told of him, "he was the first emperor of his house that embraced a regicide: he was the last that wore the imperial purple."--Far am I from thinking so ill of this august sovereign, who is at the head of the monarchies of Europe, and who is the trustee of their dignities and his own. What ferocity of character drew on the fate of Elizabeth, the sister of King Louis the Sixteenth? For which of the vices of that pattern of benevolence, of piety, and of all the virtues, did they put her to death? For which of her vices did they put to death the mildest of all human creatures, the duchess of Biron? What were the crimes of those crowds of matrons and virgins of condition, whom they massacred, with their juries of blood, in prisons and on scaffolds? What were the enormities of the infant king, whom they caused, by lingering tortures, to perish in their dungeon, and whom, if at last they despatched by poison, it was in that detestable crime the only act of mercy they have ever shown?
What softening of character is to be had, what review of their social situations and duties is to be taught, by these examples, to kings, to nobles, to men of property, to women, and to infants? The royal family perished, because it was royal. The nobles perished, because they were noble. The men, women, and children, who had property, because they had property to be robbed of. The priests were punished, after they had
For which of his vices did that great magistrate, D'Espremenil, lose his fortune and his head? What were the abominations of Malesherbes, that other excellent magistrate, whose sixty years of uniform virtue was acknowledged, in the very act of his murder, by the judicial butchers, who condemned him? On account of what misdemeanors was he robbed of his property, and slaughtered with two generations of his offspring; and the remains of the third race, with a refinement of cruelty, and lest they should appear to reclaim the property forfeited by the virtues of their ancestor, confounded in an hospital with the thousands of those unhappy foundling infants, who are abandoned, without relation, and without name, by the wretchedness or by the profligacy of their parents?
Is the fate of the queen of France to produce this softening of character? Was she a person so very ferocious and cruel as, by the example of her death, to frighten us into common humanity? Is there no way to teach the emperor a softening of character, and a review of his social situation and duty, but his consent, by an infamous accord with regicide, to drive a second coach with the Austrian arms through the streets of Paris, along which, after a series of preparatory horrors, exceeding the atrocities of the bloody execution itself, the glory of the imperial race had been carried to an ignominious death? Is this a lesson of MODERATION to a descendant of Maria Theresa, drawn from the fate of the daughter of that incomparable woman and sovereign? If he learns this lesson from such an object, and from such teachers, the man may remain, but the king is deposed. If he does not carry quite another memory of that transaction in the inmost recesses of his heart, he is unworthy to reign; he is unworthy to live. In the chronicle of disgrace he will have but this short tale told of him, "he was the first emperor of his house that embraced a regicide: he was the last that wore the imperial purple."--Far am I from thinking so ill of this august sovereign, who is at the head of the monarchies of Europe, and who is the trustee of their dignities and his own. What ferocity of character drew on the fate of Elizabeth, the sister of King Louis the Sixteenth? For which of the vices of that pattern of benevolence, of piety, and of all the virtues, did they put her to death? For which of her vices did they put to death the mildest of all human creatures, the duchess of Biron? What were the crimes of those crowds of matrons and virgins of condition, whom they massacred, with their juries of blood, in prisons and on scaffolds? What were the enormities of the infant king, whom they caused, by lingering tortures, to perish in their dungeon, and whom, if at last they despatched by poison, it was in that detestable crime the only act of mercy they have ever shown?
What softening of character is to be had, what review of their social situations and duties is to be taught, by these examples, to kings, to nobles, to men of property, to women, and to infants? The royal family perished, because it was royal. The nobles perished, because they were noble. The men, women, and children, who had property, because they had property to be robbed of. The priests were punished, after they had