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Burke, Edmund, 1729-1797

"The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 04 (of 12)"

To think of
the possibility of the existence of a permanent and hereditary royalty,
_where nothing else is hereditary or permanent in point either of
personal or corporate dignity_, is a ruinous chimera, worthy of the Abbe
Sieyes, and those wicked fools, his associates, who usurped power by the
murders of the 19th of July and the 6th of October, 1789, and who
brought forth the monster which they called _Democratie Royale_, or the
Constitution.
I believe that most thinking men would prefer infinitely some sober and
sensible form of a republic, in which there was no mention at all of a
king, but which held out some reasonable security to property, life, and
personal freedom, to a scheme of tilings like this _Democratie Royale,_
founded on impiety, immorality, fraudulent currencies, the confiscation
of innocent individuals, and the pretended rights of man,--and which, in
effect, excluding the whole body of the nobility, clergy, and landed
property of a great nation, threw everything into the hands of a
desperate set of obscure adventurers, who led to every mischief a blind
and bloody band of _sans-culottes.


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