Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)

Reflections on the Revolution in France and on the Proceedings in Certain Societies in London Relative to that Event

London

James Dodsley

1790

"This was reserved to our time, to quench the little glimmerings of reason which might break in upon the solid darkness of this enlightened age."

A noble indignation rises in the minds of your popular leaders, on hearing the magic lanthorn in their shew of finance compared to the fraudulent exhibitions of Mr. Law. They cannot bear to hear the sands of his Mississippi compared with the rock of the church, on which they build their system. Pray let them suppress this glorious spirit, until they shew to the world what piece of solid ground there is for their assignats, which they have not pre-occupied by other charges. They do injustice to that great, mother fraud, to compare it with their degenerate imitation. It is not true, that Law built solely on a speculation concerning the Mississippi. He added the East India trade; he added the African trade; he added the farms of all the farmed revenue of France. All these together unquestionably could not support the structure which the public enthusiasm, not he, chose to build upon these bases. But these were, however, in comparison, generous delusions. They supposed, and they aimed at an increase of the commerce of France. They opened to it the whole range of the two hemispheres. They did not think of feeding France from its own substance. A grand imagination found in this flight of commerce something to captivate. It was wherewithal to dazzle the eye of an eagle. It was not made to entice the smell of a mole, nuzzling and burying himself in his mother earth, as yours is. Men were not then quite shrunk from their natural dimensions by a degrading and sordid philosophy, and fitted for low and vulgar deceptions. Above all remember, that in imposing on the imagination, the then managers of the system made a compliment to the freedom of men. In their fraud there was no mixture of force. This was reserved to our time, to quench the little glimmerings of reason which might break in upon the solid darkness of this enlightened age.
(pp. 346-7, pp. 212-3 in Pocock ed.)

Light::Glimmering

Reading

At least 22 entries in the ESTC (1790, 1791, 1792, 1793).

See Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, and on the proceedings in certain societies in London relative to that event. In a letter intended to have been sent to a gentleman in Paris (London: printed for J. Dodsley, 1790) <Link to ECCO><Link to ECCO-TCP>

Text from ECCO-TCP and Past Masters.

Reading Reflections on the Revolution in France, ed. J. G. A. Pocock (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987). [Pocock identifies the definitive edition of Burke's Reflections as William B. Todd's (Rinehart Books, 1959)].

04/22/2013