Tea at Trianon: The Reason There is a Purgatory

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

Saturday, November 26, 2011

The Reason There is a Purgatory

Some reflections from Burke to Kirk. (Via Pentimento.)

If the allegations against Jerry Sandusky are true and backed by believable and admissible evidence, Clarence Darrow would not be able to save him from severe punishment. He is likely to spend the rest of his life behind bars, and sex offenders are often given the worst treatment by jailers and the jailed. At the moment, he is spinning for the best jury he can hope to have.

But in the end, he is likely to go to jail. What then? He might become penitent in the penitentiary. Understandably, many of those whose lives he ruined will be angry with anything short of the death penalty. (Read entire post.)