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. By the Right Honourable Edmund Burke.

no other prop than this confiscation to keep the whole state from tumbling to the ground. In this situation they have purposely covered all that they ought industriously to have cleared, with a thick fog; and then, blindfold themelves, like bulls that shut their eyes when they push, they drive, by the point of the bayonets, their slaves, blindfolded indeed no worse than their lords, to take their fictions for cur|rencies, and to swallow down paper pills by thirty-four millions sterling at a dose. Then they proudly lay in their claim to a future credit, on failure of all their past engagements, and at a time when (if in such a matter any thing can be clear) it is clear that the surplus estates will never answer even the first of their mortgages, I mean that of the four hun|dred million (or sixteen millions sterling) of assignats. In all this procedure I can discern neither the solid sense of plain-dealing, nor the subtle dexterity of ingenious fraud. The objection within the assembly to pulling up the flood-gates for this inundation of fraud, are unanswered; but they are thoroughly refuted by an hundred thousand financiers in the street. These are the numbers by which the meta|physic arithmeticians compute. These are the grand calculations on which a philosophical public credit is founded in France. They cannot raise supplies; but they can raise mobs. Let them rejoice in the applauses of the club at Dundee, for their wisdom and patriotism in having thus applied the plunder of the citizens to the service of the state. I hear of no address upon this subject from the directors of the Bank of England; though their approbation would be of a little more weight in the scale of credit than that of the club at Dundee. But, to do justice to

About this Item

Title: 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. By the Right Honourable Edmund Burke.
Author: Burke, Edmund, 1729-1797.
Canvas: Page 344
Publication: London :: printed for J. Dodsley,; 1790.

Technical Details

Collection: Eighteenth Century Collection Online Demo
Link to this Item: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eccodemo/k043880.0001.001
Link to this scan: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eccodemo/k043880.0001.001/347:3

Rights and Permissions

This keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the Eighteenth Century Collections Online Text Creation Partnership. Searching, reading, printing, or downloading ECCO-TCP texts is reserved for the authorized users of these project partner institutions. Permission must be granted for subsequent distribution, in print or electronically, of this text, in whole or in part. Please contact project staff at eccotcp-info.edu for further information or permissions.

IIIF

Manifest: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/api/manifest/eccodemo:k043880.0001.001

Cite this Item

Full citation: "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. By the Right Honourable Edmund Burke." In the digital collection Eighteenth Century Collection Online Demo. https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eccodemo/k043880.0001.001. University of Michigan Library Digital Collections. Accessed June 20, 2025.

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. By the Right Honourable Edmund Burke.

Annotations Tools

Actions

About this Item

Technical Details

Rights and Permissions

Related Links

IIIF

Cite this Item