BURKE ON THE NEED OF A RELIGIOUS ESTABLISHMENT.
[TO TRH EDITOR Or THE "SPECTATOR.] SIB,—As an admirer of the Spectator, I venture to send you an extract from Edmund Burke's "Reflections on the Revolution in France " (Clarendon Press, Vol II., p. 3, 1888) " When the people have emptied themselves of all the last of selfish will, which without religion it is utterly impossible they ever should, when they are conscious that they exercise . . . . . . the power which to be legitimate must be according to that eternal immutable law in which will and reason are the same, they will be more careful how they place power in base and incapable hands."
Again on p. 110 :—
" Where popular authority is absolute and unrestrained the people have an infinitely greater because a far better founded confidence in their own power. They are in a great measure their own instruments. They are nearer to their objects. Besides they are less under responsibility to one of the greatest controlling powers on earth, the sense of fame and estimation. The share of infamy that is likely to fall to the lot of each individual in public acts is small indeed,—the operation of opinion being in the inverse ratio to the number of those who abuse power. Their own approbation of their own acts has to them the appearance of a public judgment in their favour. A i.erfect democracy is therefore the most shameless thing in the world. As it is the most shameless it is also the most fearless. No man apprehends in his person he can be made subject to punishment. Certainly the people at large never ought ; for as all punishments are for example towards the conservation of the people at large the people at large can never become the subject of punishment by any human hand. It is therefore of infinite importance that they should not be suffered to imagine that their will any more than that of Kings is the standard of right and wrong."
Lieut.-Col., Retired.
?BEd des Alpes, Baumaroche sur Vevey, Switzerland.
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