Wealth & Money Quote by Edmund Burke

Penny-pinching loves to dress up as virtue, and Burke is ripping the costume off. “Mere parsimony” isn’t just thrift; it’s the small-minded politics of austerity mistaken for wisdom. He draws a bright line between the soothing moral feeling of cutting costs and the harder, less photogenic work of spending strategically. The provocation is deliberate: “great expense” sounds like decadence until Burke reframes it as investment. He’s telling a governing class addicted to the optics of restraint that real prudence can require writing big checks.

The subtext is a warning about false economies: starving institutions, infrastructure, and administrative capacity so you can brag about savings today, then paying twice as much tomorrow in crisis management, social disorder, or loss of credibility. Burke’s diction matters. “True economy” isn’t household budgeting scaled up; it’s statecraft. In an 18th-century Britain juggling imperial costs, war finance, patronage, and public anger at corruption, the demand for “economy” often meant performative cuts aimed at political enemies or public appeasement. Burke, who argued for reform but distrusted reckless simplification, insists that legitimacy and stability have price tags.

Why it works rhetorically: it flips a moral hierarchy. Parsimony, normally the sainted value, becomes “mere” - a cheap substitute for judgment. Expense, normally suspect, becomes “essential,” a word of necessity, not indulgence. It’s an argument for governing like an adult: spend where it prevents rot, strengthens trust, and keeps the system from becoming so “efficient” it can no longer function.