Tea at Trianon: The Art of Justice

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, April 15, 2014

The Art of Justice

From the Intercollegiate Review:

Justice understood as the virtue corresponding to Pieper’s robust “right” resists the modern leveling mindset. If rights are possessed and invoked by persons, and what is due to the rights-bearer is rendered by persons, and if, as Kirk points out, the traditional concept of justice provides for the variety of things a person may be due well beyond material return,[6] then the judgment that determines the proper recompense, given the diversity of the human person, is only possible at the personal level, face to face. Thus we need to keep in mind Pieper’s observation that “justice can be discussed meaningfully and fruitfully only if it is regarded in the context of a complete moral doctrine. It is one feature in the sevenfold image of man; the part becomes fully intelligible only within the whole” (italics original).[7] The liberal notion of justice tolerates no such constraints—and for that reason it is in theory meaningless, and in practice crushing. (Read more.)