“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.
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 Savior 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.”
Talleyrand, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, demanded the U.S. pay millions in bribes to stop France from raiding American ships. He stated: “Speech was given to man to conceal his thought.”
Over 40,000 were beheaded in Paris’ Reign of Terror and over 250,000 were massacred in the Vendée, a Catholic area of northwest France.
All churches were closed; religious monuments destroyed; graves desecrated; crosses forbidden; public and private worship and education were outlawed.
It was an intentional campaign to dechristianize 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.
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.
When the situation did not improve, they beheaded those disloyal to the revolution – those who had grown tired of the beheadings.
Finally Robespierre himself was beheaded, and Napoleon began his rise toward dictatorship.
In “A Letter to a Member of the National Assembly,” 1791, Edmund Burke wrote:
“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.”
William J. Federer is a nationally known speaker, best-selling author, and president of Amerisearch, Inc., a publishing company dedicated to researching America’s noble heritage.
To learn more about the author please visit William Federer
Featured image: James Barry, Edmund Burke, c. 1774, oil on canvas (Dublin, National Gallery of Ireland)
Leave a Reply