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Reflections on the Revolution in France (Oxford World's Classics)

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Edmund Burke (1729-1797)wrote REFLECTIONS ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE in 1789 which was four years before the rise of the fanatical Jacobins and the execution (murder)of Louis XVI. This book was not only well written but very prophetic on the tragic events that were part of the French Revolution. Burke showed historical insight and warned both the British and the French what was going to happen.

Burke cited conditions in France prior to the French Revolution. He certainly did not give a false representation of the economic and social conditions in France, but he was clear that, while not perfect, the French had advanced culture and tolerable living standards. He also warned the French that abrupt changes without recourse to tradition and legal norms were dangerous and would end in tyranny. Readers should be aware that Burke's assessment of the French political system was that the French had reasonble politcal freedom and prosperity. To destroy this political system would end in political disruption, social and political violence, lack of law-and-order, and the rise of tyrannical military leaders.

One should note Burke's assessment of the members of the French National Assembly which was vacilating and subject to the whims of any "political interest group" was serious. He suggested that military officers would be among those "pleaders" would be military officers who would be difficult to control. He also warned that when someone who understood the art of command got control of the military officers, the days of the French Republic and the National Assembly were over. The military commander would be in total control, and this is exactly what happened when Napolean I (1769-1821)started to exhibit military genius, he quickly got power by a coup d' etat in 1799 and became the French Emperor by 1804.

Burke's warnings of disaster and tragedy were fullfilled. From at least 1792 until 1815, the French were almost constantly at war with most Europeans. While the French Empire expanded beyond anything prior French monarchs ever dreamed of, the collapse of the French Empire came quickly, and the French empire was ended by 1815 at terrible cost in both blood treasure. Burke warned of these dangers, and his predictions were accurate.

Burke lived just long enough to see the rise and fall of the maniacal Jacobins which included the Reigh of Terror (1792-1794)and the execution of King Louis XVI and his wife, Marie antionette. Had Burke lived a few more years, he could have resorted to remarking, "I told you so."

Edmund Burke has been defined as a conservative which is true. However, Burke was not a reactionary. Burke realized that progress, whatever that may mean, is often slow and within the confines of historical tradition, legal norms, and established law. Burke warned his readers, to use modern parlance, against "wipe the slate clean." Burke clearly understood that to "wipe the slate clean, meant mass dislocation of men and ultimately mass executions (mass murder). Subsequent modern political revolutions vindicate this view.

Readers may wonder why Burke expressed support for the American Revolution but strongly opposed the French Revolution. A careful examination of these revolutions provides the answer. The American "revolutionaries" were arguing for their "Rights of Englishmen" which had a long tradition in Great Britain. Henry II (1154-1189) started the use grand juries. The English had the right of trial by jury by the time of Edward I (1272-1307). The fact is the American colonists wanted to rules of common law and long established legal traditions to apply to them. The British wanted to rule the American colonists with administrative law using clever bureaucrats, as Burke would probably have called them, rather than use British Constitutional Law and the Common Law which many American colonists demanded. The French, on the other hand, wanted to replace a weak monarch with "clever bureaucrats" which Burke knew very well could not work in France.

Readers should note that Thomas Paine (1737-1809)wrote a response to Burke's REFLECTIONS ON THE REVOLUTION titled THE RIGHTS OF MAN. While Paine's views were different than those of Burke's Paine's book was just as brilliant as Burke's. Readers should read both works if they want exposure to profound political thought and excellent writing. This is much preferred to the current political nonsense that is pushed by media talking heads and journalists who cannot think or write. Burke and Paine were well read men and offered readers history lessons as well as politcal lessons.

Edmund Burke's REFLECTIONS ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE is highly recommended regardless of one's political persuasion. This book is not a light read and takes time. However, one will be better informed and wiser for doing so. Again, this reviewer suggests the reader should read Thomas Paine's THE RIGHTS OF MAN to draw comparisons and contrasts.

To begin with: this book is a pamphlet, not a treatise. It is a call to action about a specific event, not a political programme. Burke enthusiasts may maintain it is; but let's not forget he remained a Foxite still, when he wrote this. Yes this was addressed to English, not French audiences, and was a warning to revolutionary sympathisers, but Burke had yet to cross the floor and would not do so for several years. Nor does this read stylistically, anyhow, like a treatise, even like Locke's highly contextual Two Treatises. Readers expecting a statement of the conservative creed may be disappointed. Hence the 4, not 5 stars.

As a historical document, however, the Reflections are invaluable. Burke published his point-by-point assault on the French Revolution in 1790, when the revolution was still widely popular in Britain. He was an English MP and his public, even if the Reflections are formulated as two letters to a French aristocrat, was British political opinion.

First, his book contrasts admirably the gradual, and ultimately more successful, British path to democracy to the French. Indeed the core of his argument is that the revolution laid waste to tradition, depriving its end system of the essential legitimacy that stems from it. Second, Burke was the first to warn - years before the `terror' - that radical change, once initiated, would be exceedingly difficult to stop. Third, he makes penetrating (and scathing) observations on the role of class renegades; his dissection of their motivations is striking and finds application in all situations of political upheaval. Burke's warning on radical change was vindicated not just in France, but repeatedly in Europe through the 19th and early 20th centuries. With respect to the French Revolution, he understood that any stabilisation depended on solving the question of church property, which the revolutionaries were already bungling (one smiles at a British MP springing in defence of the catholic church in the still popular days of `no popery!', but the analysis has to be cold-bloodedly correct).

The only rebuttal to Burke's argument is that the status quo was not an option either. His picture of pre-revolutionary France is on the rosy side; unlike the British, the French monarchy was in deep crisis. Nevertheless, I strongly believe this should be taught in France alongside the more hagiographical stuff. I am French, by the way, and an admirer of the events of 1789.

"Reflections" is ostensibly a tract attacking the French Revolution of 1789 but in reality its importance is its case for conservatism. The polemical nature of the book means that it is not a systematic analysis so one has to search for Burke's conservative principles.

One of his most important principles is "prescription", by which the possession of property and authority are given (at least some) legitimacy by the passage of time. Burke did not oppose all change but believed that if things are going well then they are best left alone. He wrote "A state without the means of change is without the means of its conservation", but believed that change should be for "proved abuses". Burke saw society as organic, as a "partnership" bridging all generations. In typical Burkean language he wrote that citizens "should approach the faults of the state as to the wounds of a father, with pious awe and trembling solicitude." As in any natural organism change must be slow and gradual. He observed that "I do not like to see anything destroyed, any void produced in society." He was, of course, opposed to abstract theories that he thought at best irrelevant and at worst dangerous. Society, thought Burke, needed not abstract reasoning but practical and pragmatic statesmen. He was even more opposed to revolution for it leads to excesses and unintended results.

Not surprisingly Burke stresses the importance of codes of conduct, custom and what he called "prejudice". He writes of the "pleasing illusions" that constitute "the decent drapery of life". These "antient opinions and rules of life" include politeness, deference, the chivalrous treatment of women, the "spirit of a gentleman" and the "spirit of religion". Much of this "decent drapery of life" plus respect for social superiors and authority depends on "prejudice", which is a settled inclination of mind that prompts an individual to act (virtuously) without thinking why. (Today we would call it social conditioning!) Burke argues that prejudice is not irrational for it allows people to draw on the nation's collective wisdom (which Burke calls its "bank and capital") to supplement their own inadequate powers of reason.

In using prescription to justify existing institutions, Burke defended the unequal division of property, wealth and power, plus the social hierarchy that characterised the age in which he lived. He declared (with the French Revolution in mind) that a state ruled by men such as hairdressers and tallow-chandlers would "suffer oppression", and though ability must be represented it was vital that property should "be out of all proportion predominant in the representation". He believed that in all states there are necessarily differences in status and power, and that power is best placed in the hands of men brought up from childhood with an appropriate education, status, and a sense of mission. In other words a "natural aristocracy" that had the duty of using authority for the good of all.

This support for inequality looks out-dated to 21st century readers but many of Burke's other ideas were to continue to flourish as canons of conservatism. "Reflections" is well worth reading not only for its exposition of conservative principles that so strongly influenced political thought in the following century but also as a powerfully written and prophetic polemic about the French Revolution.

This was required reading for a graduate course in the history of the French Revolution. In Burke's book Reflections on the Revolution in France, he penned a diatribe against the evils of the French Revolution, believing that there was a pernicious cabal of philosophes and politicians joined by money-jobbers whose aim was to topple not only the old regime in France, but to export their "plague" throughout Europe. Thus, Burke astutely understood and abhorred the influence that Radical Enlightenment ideas had on the French Revolution. One instantly detects, in Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, a conservative philosophy by which he not only understood his own society, but the entire human civilization. Much of his work was an appeal to a politically conservative notion of a "created order" of the world, which from this reading seemed to be universal to all European nations. This reader sensed that Burke's Reflections were written as a warning to the rest of Europe not to follow the model of change embodied in the French Revolution, and to adopt the steady reforms that took place in England.

Burke found no social redeeming value in the French Revolution and when he wrote Reflections, the worst of the "reign of terror" had yet to come. In fact, if one used Georges Lefebvre's notion of "four acts" to the Revolution, Burke poured out all his criticism against the first two acts, the aristocratic and bourgeois revolts. This reader found Burke's long sections on British history used to buttress his case; that change should have come to France within a more staid social order as either ignorant of the complex socio-economic and political factors that led up to the Revolution, or as a naïve belief that that the French people were so culturally close to the English that they should both react in similar fashion to socio-political upheaval. Burke delivered a literary "tongue lashing" to the French for how easily they turned their backs on their socio-political traditions. "You had all these advantages in your ancient states; but you chose to act as if you had never been moulded into civil society, and had everything to begin anew. You began ill, because you began by despising everything that belonged to you" (31). This reader found Burke's argument on this point a little disingenuous. He lectured how Britain's "Glorious Revolution" in 1688 should have been the model for reform. However, he barely mentioned the bloody English Civil War that Cromwell staged, including the regicide of Charles I. In addition, one's impression of Burke's information is that he had received a very narrow view of the history leading up to the Revolution and its opening days, which seemed confined to correspondence from a small circle of friends. Burke had high praise for the First and Second Estates. His opinion of the nobles he knew was that they were, "...for the greater part composed of men of high spirit, and of a delicate sense of honour....They were tolerably well bred; very officious, humane, and hospitable" (115-116). Not the impression one is left with after viewing the movie Dangerous Liaisons! In describing his personal contacts with the French clergy, he noted that, "I received a perfectly good account of their morals, and of their attention to their duties" (123).

Burke essentially observed a "cabal" that planned the opening of the Revolution to include a pronouncement of aristocratic intentions to abolish feudalism, the National Assembly's adoption of the "Declaration of the Rights of Man," and the confiscation of Church property. Burke blamed two evils for the old regimes' demise. First, he blamed the philosophes whose atheistic literature he believed provided the influential ideas necessary to set the Revolution in motion. "The literary cabal had some years ago formed something like a regular plan for the destruction of the Christian religion" (94). "Writers, especially when they act in a body, and with one direction, have great influence on the public mind" (95). Second, he blamed the doubling of the Third Estate's representation in the National Assembly who were led by an overabundance of undistinguished lawyers and whose ambitions were to grab the reins of power. Burke described these men as "the inferior, unlearned, mechanical, merely instrumental members of the profession" (36). Burke also ascribed to this cabal; the desire to reorder society through the confiscation of property, which he decried in his Reflections. "I see the confiscators begin with bishops, and chapters, and monasteries; but I do not see them end their" (128). Thus, Burke found that the pernicious cabal of philosophes and politicians were too enamored of the "new religion" of enlightenment science and had no respect for tradition or the wisdom of religion. "They conceive very systematically, that all things which give perpetuity are mischievous" (75).
Alexis de Tocqueville noted how Burke misjudged the Revolution. "At first he thought it meant that France would be weakened and virtually destroyed" (94). Burke also feared that this "irrational" revolution would infest his own countrymen similar to a plaque. "If it be a plague, it is such a plague that the precautions of the most severe quarantine ought to be established against it." (76).

Burke was no stranger to enlightened ideas. After all, he had been a supporter of American and Irish liberty. Burke was a Conservative Enlightenment figure, defending "reason" with tradition and religion. However, what Burke, was condemning in its earliest form is what we now recognize as ideology. And what he understood with great foresight is the power of modern intellectuals, acting as a literary clerisy, to produce it. Thus, Burke found that the pernicious cabal of philosophes and politicians were too enamored of the "new religion" of enlightenment science and had no respect for tradition or the wisdom of religion. "They conceive very systematically, that all things which give perpetuity are mischievous" (75).

Recommended reading for anyone interested in political philosophy, enlightenment history, and the French Revolution.

This small title is actually a letter that the author wrote to a friend in France. When Edmund Burke wrote this letter about the French Revolution (where the king was overthrown and beheaded by the masses aka Jacobins), English scholars agree that the result was the finest piece of prose in the English language; only a few poets have succeeded in writing something finer. Whether you agree with Burke's interpretation or not is not the point; he penned the finest piece of literature ever in the English language.

As a historian and social commentator, Burke is a "structural functionalist" decades before that term was dreamed up. He recognizes that the French are not only creatures of their culture, but prisoners. And to compare them to the English colonists and other insurgents in the American colonies who revolted against the British government is to compare apples and oranges. Whereas the Yankee revolution of 1776 was Biblically-inspired and the propaganda for rebellion preached from the pulpits, the French were railing AGAINST the Catholic Church for keeping people ignorant and in their Dark Age.

Burke says the French Revolution is a revolution without its moorings, without the necessary principles to guide individual behavior, and without the maintenance of institutions that long provided stability and security. What the French philosophes were writing was mere balderdash, says Burke. Without their traditions, customs, and institutitions that had slowly brought the French out of barbarity and into a civilized manner of living, Burke saw in revolution a rapid decline and fall of the French people into a visciousness of dog-eat-dog.

In short, Burke saw the French Revolution as lacking virtue and descending into terrorism; whereas the Yankee Revolution was virtuous and grew into a democracy.

Whether you agree with Burke or not, and I do not, his writing in this letter to a friend is the finest example of English writing to be found and should be read by everyone simply for that reason alone.

Originally written as a long letter, "Reflections on the Revolution in France" is Edmund Burke's response to the French Revolution of 1789. Filled with historical inaccuracies, long and tiresome sentences, old fashioned English, and sometimes comical upper-class comments, one justifiably would wonder if "Reflections" has any value left for the reader of today.

The answer is that it has. This book outlines through its analysis (factually correct or not) the philosophy of Edmund Burke, the British MP that is credited as the father of conservatism. Burke expands the argument of the preservation of tradition, and the gradual change and reform of political institutions, against the radical re-organisation of them. This book is not about monarchy against democracy, or freedom against tyranny. It is rather an argument between gradual reform of traditional institutions against the implementation of abstract philosophical ideas (which were a product of the Enlightenment), and the complete abolition of traditional forms of political organisation that have stood through time. For this, "Reflections" deserves its place next to other great classic works on political philosophy, and should be read by conservatives and supporters of other ideological traditions alike.

However, it can be proven a difficult and frustrating read. The book is not separated into chapters, but is instead a long essay, since it was originally written as a letter with Burke's comments on the Revolution. Another point is the many references to events and people that Burke makes, which can be entirely unknown to the reader. The Oxford edition is excellent, as it has references and footnotes explaining the people and events Burke refers to, and is advised.

Overall, "Reflections" is a classic work on political philosophy, and a founding document of what conservatism should be about. I would gladly advice it to anyone interested in learning about a new point of view concerning political issues, or to anyone interested in understanding the core principles of the philosophy of conservatism.

"Reflections on the Revolution in France" is Edmund Burke's famous denunciation of the French Revolution. Burke opposed the Revolution because the French tried to reform society by completely breaking with their past, rather than by attempting in a gradual manner to reform and improve their existing institutions.

Burke was not opposed to all change, when it righted grievous wrongs and was in line with a country's culture and institutions--he did support the American Revolution, which our Founding Fathers believed was a revolution against "a long train of abuses" leading to "absolute despotism". Burke also believed that no factions in society "should be brought to regard any of the others as their proper prey". This led him to support the abolition of both slavery and the slave trade.

Given that Burke supported abolition when he lived, he almost certainly would have done so had he been a nineteenth-century American. For that matter, if the non-slaveholding yeoman farmers of the antebellum South had refused to be the planters' "prey", if they had simply told the planter class that they would not support secession if the planters attempted it, and had they refused to be cannon fodder merely so the planter class could keep its slaves, perhaps the whole slaveholding system would have imploded without war, and the U.S. could have rid itself of slavery without the cost of more than 600,000 dead and multitudes more maimed.

Many twenty-first century American liberals cynically describe Burkeanism as conservatives treating liberal precedents as sacrosanct, and refer to conservatives who refuse to do so as "not Burkean", "not real conservatives", "nihilists", or "revanchists". What these liberals want is a conservatism that does not fight against or attempt to roll back misguided left-wing initiatives. Again, Burke was not opposed to all change, as he is sometimes portrayed today. If no change is ever permitted, a society is cursed with what Margaret Thatcher referred to as the "ratchet effect"--a society that periodically moves leftward, but never moves rightward to correct liberal mistakes.

Because Burke is so often misrepresented today, it is important to study him as much to determine what he did not believe as to determine what he did believe. Conservatives interested in their intellectual pedigree should read this epic work of political thought at some point in life.

In 1789, the year of the French Revolution, Burke received a request from a good friend living in France to provide his thoughts on the Revoution. The result- one of the finest pieces of political discourse ever written. For those encountering Burke for the first time, his adament defense of the crown, and of hereditary succcesion, seem to make a hypocrite of this self-proclaimed liberal. Burke, however, was not defending an absolute monarch who ruled under the charter of divine right, but rather, pointing out the danger of a perfect democracy, whose sovereign (the national assembly) was compelled not to a moral authority such as a Church, nor to a fixed consitution. In short, liberty was safer restricted in civil socity, than left unchecked.

Whether you find Burke's analysis, consistent with your political leanings, or more likely, you find his writing very offensive, you can appreciate both the efffect of this work on American and European political though, as well as the reason and intelligence with which it was written.

Edmund Burke was someone I had hardly heard of two years ago. Then I stumbled across this book and became instantly hooked by two things: the quality of his thought and his impeccable style.

Burke supported the American Revolution, and despised the French Revolution, for reasons which should be apparent to any thinking man but are clearly spelled out here. (Just this year, Ann Coulter makes the same case in her new book Demonic: How the Liberal Mob Is Endangering America. If you think her title is going too far, wait until you have read the horrifying and bloody details of what went on in the French Revolution, where it is not too much too say that mobs of men behaved worse than gibbering savages, killing at random and doing unspeakable things to the corpses of the dead.) What is remarkable is that Burke saw all this coming long before the actual arrival of the Great Terror, and he was extremely displeased by some so-called Christians braying from the pulpit that England needed to follow the example of France.

If you read this, you may well start looking for more Burke to read. If you have a Kindle, you're in luck. The last time I looked, his complete works were available for less than a buck: The Works of Edmund Burke, all 12 volumes in a single file, improved 8/8/2010.

This is an indispensible essay for anyone who has ever been interested in politics. It is composed of beautiful prose, crisp logic, and perennially relevant material.

You must read Burke to understand the why it is worth being critical of the French Revolution and to understand some major reasons for the counter-revolutionary movement in France.