"ALL that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing."
This famous quote was from British statesman Edmund Burke, who was born JANUARY 12, 1729.
He was considered the most influential orator in the House of Commons.
Edmund
Burke stands out in history for, as a member of the British Parliament,
he defended the rights of the American colonies and strongly opposed
the slave trade.
Edmund Burke wrote in his Will:
"First,
according to the ancient, good, and laudable custom, of which my heart
and understanding recognize the propriety, I bequeath my soul to God,
hoping for His mercy through the only merits of our Lord and Saviour
Jesus Christ."
When
America's Revolutionary War began, Edmund Burke addressed Parliament
with "A Second Speech on the Conciliation with America," March 22, 1775:
"The people are Protestants; and of that kind which is the most adverse to all implicit submission of mind and opinion.
This is a persuasion not only favorable to liberty, but built upon it..."
Edmund Burke continued:
"All
Protestantism...is a sort of dissent. But the religion most prevalent
in our Northern Colonies is a refinement on the principle of resistance;
it is the dissidence of dissent, and the protestantism of the
Protestant religion."
Edmund Burke is quoted in
The Works and Correspondence of the Right Honorable Edmund Burke, Volume VI:
"The
Scripture...is a most remarkable, but most multifarious, collection of
the records of the Divine economy; a collection of an infinite variety
of theology, history, prophecy, psalmody, morality, allegory,
legislation, carried through different books, by different authors, at
different ages, for different ends and purposes."
In 1789, the French Revolution started with the motto "Liberty, Equality and Fraternity."
Robespierre,
who led France's "Committee of Public Safety," gave a Speech to the
National Convention, February 5, 1794, titled "Terror Justified."
Robespierre stated he would:
"Lead the people by means of reason and...by terror...
Terror is nothing else than swift, severe, indomitable justice; it flows, then, from virtue."
Robespierre's Reign of Terror resulted in over 40,000 being beheaded in
Paris and over 300,000 massacred in the Vendée, a Catholic area of
northwest France, and:
- all churches were closed;
- crosses were forbidden;
- religious monuments destroyed;
-
graves were desecrated, including Ste. Genevieve's, who had called
Paris to pray to avert an attack of Attila the Hun in 451AD;
- public and private worship and education were outlawed;
- treaties were broken resulting in the capture of 300 American ships headed to British ports.
Talleyrand,
the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, demanded the U.S. pay millions
in bribes to stop France from raiding American ships.
He stated: "We were given speech to hide our thoughts."
Get the book, America's God and Country Encyclopedia of Quotations
There was an intentional campaign to de-christianize French society, replacing it with a civic religion of state worship.
Robespierre placed a prostitute in Notre Dame Cathedral, covered her with a sheet, and called her 'the goddess of reason'.
The
first to be beheaded were King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, but when
the country's situation did not improve, Robespierre accused all the
royalty, who were then beheaded.
When the situation did not
improve, the next to be beheaded were the wealthy, followed by business
owners, farmers and those who hoarded food.
When
the situation did not improve, the religious clergy were beheaded,
being accused of holding the nation back from achieving a secular
utopian society.
Priests and ministers, along with those who harbored them, were executed on sight, similar to what happened in Mexico in 1917.
When
the situation did not improve, they beheaded those who had grown tired
of the beheadings accusing them of becoming 'disloyal' to the
revolution.
Finally, Robespierre himself was beheaded, and Napoleon began his rise toward dictatorship.
As the bloody French Revolution progressed, Edmund Burke wrote in "A Letter to a Member of the National Assembly," 1791:
"What is liberty without wisdom and without virtue?
It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without restraint.
Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites;
in proportion as they are disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good in preference to the flattery of knaves..."
Edmund Burke continued:
"Society
cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be
placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there
must be without.
It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free.
Their passions forge their fetters."
In
Reflections on the Revolution in France, 1790, Edmund Burke wrote:
"People will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors."
On January 9, 1795, in a letter to William Smith, Edmund Burke stated:
"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing."
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