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Burke, Edmund, 1729-1797

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

It is on this
principle that the massacres in the month of September, 1792, were
justified by a writer in the Morning Chronicle. _He_ says, indeed, that
"the whole French nation is to be given up to the hands of an irritated
and revengeful noblesse";--and, judging of others by himself and his
brethren, he says, "Whoever succeeds in a civil war will be cruel. But
here the emigrants, flying to revenge in the cars of military victory,
will almost insatiably call for their victims and their booty; and a
body of emigrant traitors were attending the King of Prussia and the
Duke of Brunswick, to suggest the most sanguinary counsels." So says
this wicked Jacobin; but so cannot say the King of Prussia nor the Duke
of Brunswick, who never did receive any sanguinary counsel; nor did the
king's brothers, or that great body of gentlemen who attended those
princes, commit one single cruel action, or hurt the person or property
of one individual. It would be right to quote the instance. It is like
the military luxury attributed to these unfortunate sufferers in our
common cause.


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