"At an expense trifling indeed, compared to what she frequently spends upon unprofitable contests, she might place the moral world on a new foundation, and to rise the pinnacle of moral glory"
About this Quote
A clergyman’s compliment that lands like a rebuke: Strachan flatters “she” (almost certainly Britain, cast in the familiar feminine register of empire) while quietly indicting the state’s addictions. The line is built on a weaponized comparison. “An expense trifling indeed” makes moral transformation sound like a bargain, then “what she frequently spends upon unprofitable contests” drags military adventurism and political quarrels into the dock. It’s sermon rhetoric adapted to an imperial budget: if the nation can hemorrhage money for wars and faction, why plead poverty when asked to invest in virtue?
Strachan’s intent is persuasion through shame, aimed at power. As an Anglican leader in British North America, he wrote from the hinge point where empire liked to imagine itself as civilizing force while routinely acting as extractor and enforcer. That tension is the subtext: the “moral world” is not just personal ethics but public order - institutions, education, missions, social discipline. “Place the moral world on a new foundation” sounds lofty, but it’s also programmatic, a call to build systems that produce compliant citizens and stable colonies. Moral improvement, here, is governance by another name.
The final phrase, “rise the pinnacle of moral glory,” reveals the emotional hook: national vanity. Strachan offers Britain a way to convert brute power into moral prestige, to be admired rather than merely feared. It’s a pitch for soft power before the term existed, and it works because it treats virtue not as sacrifice but as strategic self-interest, the cheapest path to greatness - if the empire can resist its taste for “contests” that profit no one but pride.
Strachan’s intent is persuasion through shame, aimed at power. As an Anglican leader in British North America, he wrote from the hinge point where empire liked to imagine itself as civilizing force while routinely acting as extractor and enforcer. That tension is the subtext: the “moral world” is not just personal ethics but public order - institutions, education, missions, social discipline. “Place the moral world on a new foundation” sounds lofty, but it’s also programmatic, a call to build systems that produce compliant citizens and stable colonies. Moral improvement, here, is governance by another name.
The final phrase, “rise the pinnacle of moral glory,” reveals the emotional hook: national vanity. Strachan offers Britain a way to convert brute power into moral prestige, to be admired rather than merely feared. It’s a pitch for soft power before the term existed, and it works because it treats virtue not as sacrifice but as strategic self-interest, the cheapest path to greatness - if the empire can resist its taste for “contests” that profit no one but pride.
Quote Details
| Topic | Ethics & Morality |
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