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Reflections on the Revolution in France (Select works of Edmund Burke, Volume 2)

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1. Background
Edmund Burke (1729-1797) was a political theorist and British statesman who was a member of the House of Commons and a major figure in the Whig party. He is best known for his oratory and for being an "advocate of political prudence and compromise." He was sympathetic with the concerns expressed by American statesmen prior to the American Revolution and was famous for pleading the cause of the American colonists in British Parliament and for his speech to the House of Commons on conciliation with the American colonies. He urged England to "leave America, if she has taxable matter in her, to tax herself. I am not going here into the distinctions of rights, nor attempting to mark their boundaries; I hate the very sound of them ... Leave the Americans as they anciently stood, and these distinctions, born of our unhappy contest, will die along with it." Burke continually lobbied for a more equitable treatment of the American colonists, but did not feel that their concerns were being adequately addressed by the English Parliament. When the Revolutionary War ultimately broke out, he did not give it his express support, but he did approve of the resulting conservative republic based on time-tested principles and natural law.
Burke's view of the French Revolution was wholly different. He attacked the French Revolution for having cast off the first principles that hold together societies: piety, custom, tradition, and continuity with the past. All of these ground society in a sense of justice and of necessary authority. The French Enlightenment instead pushed "claims of abstract right upon metaphysical premises, and [endeavored] to govern the commonwealth by notions of perfection."
In response to the French aristocrat Charles-Jean-François Depont, who asked Burke to share his impressions of the Revolution, Burke wrote Reflections on the Revolution in France in late 1789, just months after the fall of the Bastille at the beginning of the Revolution. Burke's Reflections, a thorough assessment of the events of the day, became after it was published in 1790 one of the best-known intellectual attacks against the French Revolution. In the twentieth century, it influenced conservatives, who re-cast Burke's arguments to apply to the then-contemporary challenges threatening liberty, such as communism.

2. The Text
a. Introduction
In his Reflections, Burke fiercely opposed the French Revolution and the French Jacobins. He predicted that the Revolution, which was based on an unreal and distorted view of human nature, would end disastrously. The "legislators who framed the ancient republics ... were obliged to study human nature" (¶ 342), because any polity cannot be firmly established without an accurate understanding of men and of their habits. The French Revolutionaries, in contrast, led by Rousseau, Turgot, and other philosophes, ignored the biblical teachings on man's sinful nature and cast all of their faith on his perfectibility and ability to reason. Burke condemned this vehemently, for he "could not conceive of a durable social order without the spirit of piety."

b. Reasons for Opposing the French Revolution
The ideological underpinning of the French Revolution was based on abstract principles and not hard realities. Burke writes: "The science of constructing a commonwealth, or renovating it, or reforming it, is, like every other experimental science, not to be taught a priori. Nor is it a short experience that can instruct us in that practical science" (¶ 109). Such an approach, says Burke, leads to a declaration of abstract rights to a series of goods, such as food and medicine, to a confounded "homogenous mass" (¶ 342) that ignores all distinctions between classes and citizens. The state that seeks to abolish all classes and treat all equally in this respect is like the husbandman who does not have enough of common sense not to "abstract and equalize [all his sheep, horses, and oxen] into animals without providing for each kind an appropriate food, care, and employment, whilst he, the economist, disposer, and shepherd of his own kindred, subliming himself into an airy metaphysician, was resolved to know nothing of his flocks but as men in general" (¶ 342). Furthermore, the revolutionaries declare their rights to a series of goods without elaborating "the method of procuring and administering them" (¶ 108).
Burke predicted that a political ideology founded upon abstract rights could easily be easily twisted to justify tyranny. Factions would prevail in the army and the only way of "securing military obedience in this state of things" would be through a "popular general" who would command the army and become the master "of your whole republic" (¶ 401). Indeed, the fierce course of Napoleon would ultimately vindicate Burke and prove his views right.

c. Property and Equality
Burke further rejects the French revolutionaries' egalitarian principles and he recognizes that some men are more fit to be in a ruling class than others: "the state suffers oppression if such as [hairdressers, tallow-chandlers, etc.], either individually or collectively, are permitted to rule" (¶ 90). The revolutionaries believe they are "combating prejudice," but in reality, they are "at war with nature" (¶ 90). Even the Scriptures recognize the ruler's need for leisure and learning; the working man, whose time will be filled by menial labor, will not have developed the wisdom necessary for ruling, for the "wisdom of a learned man cometh by opportunity of leisure; and he that hath little business shall become wise ... How can he get wisdom that holdeth the plough, and that glorieth in the goad; that driveth oxen; and is occupied in their labours; and whose talk is of bullocks?" (Ecclesiasticus, chap. xxxviii. verses 24, 25, referencing ¶ 90).
Regarding the equal distribution of property, Burke writes that the "characteristic essence of property, formed out of the combined principles of its acquisition and conservation, is to be unequal" (¶ 93). Furthermore, Burke writes that the "same quantity of property, which is by the natural course of things divided among many, has not the same operation" (¶ 93). Thus, one property, if it is equally divided among many, may not be as useful as it would be if it were held by one owner, for its "defensive power is weakened as it is diffused. In this diffusion each man's portion is less than what, in the eagerness of his desires, he may flatter himself to obtain by dissipating the accumulations of others." Burke thus rejects the pillaging of the wealthy of the aristocracy for the purpose of redistribution under the French Revolution; for "He that has but five shillings in the partnership has as good a right to it as he that has five hundred pounds has to his larger proportion" (¶ 105).

d. A Place for Prejudice
He further advocates for a role for what he calls "'prejudice," a "general bank and capital of nations and of ages" comprised of irrational, untaught feelings and cherished values. Prejudice "previously engages the mind in a steady course of wisdom and virtue and does not leave the man hesitating in the moment of decision skeptical, puzzled, and unresolved. Prejudice renders a man's virtue his habit, and not a series of unconnected acts. Through just prejudice, his duty becomes a part of his nature" (¶ 161).
Burke refutes Rousseau's social contract theory; yet he concedes that "Society is indeed a contract" (¶ 181). However, this contract is not a mere "partnership agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee, calico, or tobacco, or some other such low concern, to be taken up for a little temporary interest, and to be dissolved by the fancy of the parties" (¶ 181). Rather, it is a true "contract of eternal society, linking the lower with the higher natures, connecting the visible and invisible world, according to a fixed compact sanctioned by the inviolable oath which holds all physical and all moral natures, each in their appointed place" (¶ 181). This contract ultimately gives rise to high civil social order and links the past to the present and future.

e. Casting Off History and Tradition
The French revolutionaries, in contrast, have abruptly cut off the present from the past. Centuries of teachings on man's fallenness and corruption have no place in their idealistic worldview. The revolutionaries instead believed that man was naturally benevolent and generous, but was corrupted by institutions, which the revolutionaries set out to reform. They sought to establish a new moral order based on nothing more than man's reason and fancy. This is contrasted with the Glorious Revolution of England, which Burke constantly traces back to laws, customs, and traditions, and he further shows how those who were instituting the reforms constantly invoked past laws that legitimized these reforms. Advocating for gradual reform, he wrote that what took place in England was not a revolution but rather, the avoidance thereof.
In England, the nobility and the church are the two cornerstones of civilization and are founded on and preserved by what Burke calls "the spirit of a gentleman and the spirit of religion" (¶ 149). Burke writes, "Nothing is more certain than that our manners, our civilization, and all the good things which are connected with manners and with civilization have, in this European world of ours, depended for ages upon two principles and were, indeed, the result of both combined: I mean the spirit of a gentleman and the spirit of religion" (¶ 149). To do away with these two spirits would be to do away with the institutions of the nobility and the church. It is thus no coincidence that the French revolutionaries would have been so quick to attack the "keepers" of the story, sending thirteen thousand aristocrats and priests, nuns, and other clergy to the guillotine, seizing church property, casting off old forms and forging a new way forward. The guardians of the metanarrative were being executed, for in the French Revolution, all was "to be changed. All the pleasing illusions which made power gentle and obedience liberal, which harmonized the different shades of life, and which, by a bland assimilation, incorporated into politics the sentiments which beautify and soften private society, are to be dissolved by this new conquering empire of light and reason" (¶ 143). The French Revolution would cast off the moral imagination of history and tradition and replace it with the stark uniformity of reason and conformity: "All the super-added ideas, furnished from the wardrobe of a moral imagination, which the heart owns and the understanding ratifies as necessary to cover the defects of our naked, shivering nature, and to raise it to dignity in our own estimation, are to be exploded as a ridiculous, absurd, and antiquated fashion" (¶ 143).
Yet Burke is not against all change. He is a liberal conservative in that he believes that some change is good when it is necessary to preserve or restore a nation's first principles and old good order. He writes, "A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation. Without such means it might even risk the loss of that part of the constitution which it wished the most religiously to preserve" (¶ 42). Statutes are to be reformed for the continuity of principles. This process of reforming is not to be confused with meliorism; rather, prudent change is the means of social preservation. Change is acceptable only when it is necessary, and it is prudent that change be incremental for the sake of upholding tradition. As for revolution, it is only available as a last means when absolute necessity calls upon it. Burke condemns those who too readily call for revolution; he s"never liked this continual talk of resistance and revolution, or the practice of making the extreme medicine of the constitution its daily bread. It renders the habit of society dangerously valetudinary; it is taking periodical doses of mercury sublimate and swallowing down repeated provocatives of cantharides to our love of liberty" (¶ 113).

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 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.