[The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) by Edmund Burke]@TWC D-Link bookThe Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) PREFACE 32/99
Examine history; consult present experience; and you will find that far the greater part of the quarrels between several nations had scarce any other occasion than that these nations were different combinations of people, and called by different names: to an Englishman, the name of a Frenchman, a Spaniard, an Italian, much more a Turk, or a Tartar, raises of course ideas of hatred and contempt. If you would inspire this compatriot of ours with pity or regard for one of these, would you not hide that distinction? You would not pray him to compassionate the poor Frenchman, or the unhappy German.
Far from it; you would speak of him as a _foreigner_; an accident to which all are liable.
You would represent him as a _man_; one partaking with us of the same common nature, and subject to the same law.
There is something so averse from our nature in these artificial political distinctions, that we need no other trumpet to kindle us to war and destruction.
But there is something so benign and healing in the general voice of humanity that, maugre all our regulations to prevent it, the simple name of man applied properly, never fails to work a salutary effect. This natural unpremeditated effect of policy on the unpossessed passions of mankind appears on other occasions.
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