Tea at Trianon: Priceless

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

Friday, March 12, 2021

Priceless

From Crisis:

While the reasons my generation continues to put off marriage and children is a far more complex moral question and less of an economic one, perhaps it is time we mirror our economic policies to our aspired values and see if that would not prove to be more fruitful for the future.

One place to start would be getting our economy back to a place where one income is enough to raise a family, in hopes that we might once again value the life or ‘career’ (as Lewis calls it) that all other careers are meant to financially support.

Now, I am not against all women working. That is a very nuanced topic and not the focus of this article. However, in principle, I am against women having to work out of necessity since they already bear their own burden in the family equation, being the primary caregiver of children. Giving women a second responsibility and expectation on top of that? Hardly equal. (Read more.)