Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)

A Letter from Mr. Burke to a Member of the National Assembly; In Answer to Some Objections to his Book on French Affairs

Paris and London

Re-printed for J. Dodsley

January 19, 1791

"It is that new invented virtue, which your masters canonize, that led their moral hero constantly to exhaust the stores of his powerful rhetoric in the expression of universal benevolence; whilst his heart was incapable of harbouring one spark of common parental affection."

It is that new invented virtue, which your masters canonize, that led their moral hero constantly to exhaust the stores of his powerful rhetoric in the expression of universal benevolence; whilst his heart was incapable of harbouring one spark of common parental affection. Benevolence to the whole species, and want of feeling for every individual with whom the professors come in contact, form the character of the new philosophy. Setting up for an unsocial independence, this their hero of vanity refuses the just price of common labour, as well as the tribute which opulence owes to genius, and which, when paid, honours the giver and the receiver; and then he pleads his beggary as an excuse for his crimes. He melts with tenderness for those only who touch him by the remotest relation, and then, without one natural pang, casts away, as a sort of offal and excrement, the spawn of his disgustful amours, and sends his children to the hospital of foundlings. The bear loves, licks, and forms her young; but bears are not philosophers. Vanity, however, finds its account in reversing the train of our natural feelings. Thousands admire the sentimental writer; the affectionate father is hardly known in his parish.
(pp. 34-5)

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Text copied online and cursorily corrected against Edmund Burke, A Letter from Mr. Burke to a Member of the National Assembly; In Answer to Some Objections to his Book on French Affairs, 3rd edition (Paris, Printed, and London, Re-printed for J. Dodsley, 1791). <Link to Google Books>

05/07/2013