The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 05 (of 12) by Edmund Burke
page 64 of 451 (14%)
page 64 of 451 (14%)
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proceedings of the 10th of August. He considers the slaughter of that
day as a necessary measure for defeating a conspiracy which (with a full knowledge of the falsehood of his assertion) he asserts to have been formed for a massacre of the people of Paris, and which he more than insinuates was the work of his late unhappy master,--who was universally known to carry his dread of shedding the blood of his most guilty subjects to an excess. "Without the day of the 10th," says he, "it is evident that we should have been lost. The court, prepared for a long time, waited for the hour which was to accumulate all treasons, to display over Paris the standard of death, and to reign there by terror. The sense of the people, (_le sentiment_,) always just and ready when their opinion is not corrupted, foresaw the epoch marked for their destruction, and rendered it fatal to the conspirators." He then proceeds, in the cant which has been applied to palliate all their atrocities from the 14th of July, 1789, to the present time:--"It is in the nature of things," continues he, "and in that of the human heart, that victory should bring with it _some_ excess. The sea, agitated by a violent storm, roars _long_ after the tempest; but _everything has bounds_, which ought _at length_ to be observed." In this memorable epistle, he considers such _excesses_ as fatalities arising from the very nature of things, and consequently not to be punished. He allows a space of time for the duration of these agitations; and lest he should be thought rigid and too scanty in his measure, he thinks it may be _long_. But he would have things to cease _at length_. But when? and where?--When they may approach his own person. |
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