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Burke, Edmund, 1729-1797

"The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 05 (of 12)"

With a fixed design they have outlawed
themselves, and to their power outlawed all other nations.
Instead of the religion and the law by which they were in a great
politic communion with the Christian world, they have constructed their
republic on three bases, all fundamentally opposite to those on which
the communities of Europe are built. Its foundation is laid in Regicide,
in Jacobinism, and in Atheism; and it has joined to those principles a
body of systematic manners which secures their operation.
If I am asked how I would be understood in the use of these terms,
Regicide, Jacobinism, Atheism, and a system of correspondent manners,
and their establishment, I will tell you.
I call a commonwealth _Regicide_ which lays it down as a fixed law of
Nature and a fundamental right of man, that all government, not being a
democracy, is an usurpation,[31]--that all kings, as such, are usurpers,
and, for being kings, may and ought to be put to death, with their
wives, families, and adherents. The commonwealth which acts uniformly
upon those principles, and which, after abolishing every festival of
religion, chooses the most flagrant act of a murderous regicide treason
for a feast of eternal commemoration, and which forces all her people to
observe it,--this I call _Regicide by Establishment_.
Jacobinism is the revolt of the enterprising talents of a country
against its property. When private men form themselves into associations
for the purpose of destroying the preexisting laws and institutions of
their country,--when they secure to themselves an army by dividing
amongst the people of no property the estates of the ancient and lawful
proprietors,--when a state recognizes those acts,--when it does not make
confiscations for crimes, but makes crimes for confiscations,--when it
has its principal strength and all its resources in such a violation of
property,--when it stands chiefly upon such a violation, massacring by
judgments, or otherwise, those who make any struggle for their old legal
government, and their legal, hereditary, or acquired possessions,--I
call this _Jacobinism by Establishment_.


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