Tea at Trianon: All or Nothing

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, November 26, 2021

All or Nothing

From Dr. Esolen at Crisis:

Perhaps we can see the principle more clearly if we turn to a different time and place and a different flavor of acid. Think of chattel slavery in the United States. Men like Thomas Jefferson inherited the sin and its effects, but they did not accept the principle of the sin. This they rejected—by no means as courageously and resolutely as they should have, but Jefferson was not alone when he said, “I tremble to think that God is just.” He knew that it was wicked and that it cried to God for vengeance.

Washington, also sore of conscience, did better. He trained up his slaves in remunerable trades—so that when he emancipated them upon his death, they could earn a living on their own. Apologists for the south often say that their opponents in the north were largely play-acting about their indignation, and I think that there is some truth in that, given how coldly the northerners received blacks after the Civil War.

But to accept the evil on principle, to call slavery a good thing, indeed not atavistic but downright progressive, was another matter. And though that was not the sole cause of the Civil War, and perhaps not even the most important cause, I believe that Lincoln was correct when he said that the nation could not remain forever half slave and half free. It was like saying that you cannot have half a principle. You must choose. (Read more.)