Reflections on the Revolution in France

by

Edmund Burke

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Reflections on the Revolution in France: Section 14 Summary & Analysis

Summary
Analysis
Burke looks at the journals of the Assembly of September 29, 1789, and its subsequent proceedings, to examine the “spirit […] tendency, and […] fitness” of the legislature, since one would hope to discover great ability in this part of government, if nowhere else. He will also consider the internal consistency of the legislature and its own principles.
Burke’s work will shift from general reflections to study of a specific document. This accords with his view that the theoretic must go hand in hand with the practical.
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Burke says that people can look at the effects of old establishments in order to determine their quality. Most often, these establishments were not built on theories; rather, theories were derived from them, and experience helped refine the original scheme. Errors and deviations often prompt healthy course-corrections. However, “in a new and merely theoretic system,” none of this refinement can be seen, since the builders made no attempt “to accommodate the new building to an old one.”
Burke decides to examine the fruits of what has gone before. He argues that old establishments, unlike the newfangled ones of the Revolution, were not based on abstract theories. Institutions become healthier through reform—a combination of old material with new refinements. He uses the symbol of an old building being repaired to illustrate this point.
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The new legislators sought to form their body on a basis of territory, a basis of population, and a basis of contribution. For the territorial (or geometrical) basis, they divided France into 83 squares of equal size, called departments. These, in turn, were portioned into 720 smaller districts called communes, and subdivided those once more into 6,400 cantons. Previously, the divisions of the land were more accidental, and inconveniences had been dealt with over time. By the time the state surveyors discovered that dividing France into squares might create inequalities difficult to reconcile, it was too late to change course.
Burke looks at the specific steps undertaken by the Revolution. One of these was to divide up France geometrically for purposes of representation. However, this practice could be viewed as artificial and even perpetuating the problem of unequal representation that it sought to address.
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The basis of population proved more difficult. It was planned at first that every man would have a vote, and vote directly for the person he wished to represent him in government. However, there is a considerable distance between a voter and his representative. First, the voters in each canton must pay three days’ labor to the public. Then, the groups of voters in each canton elect deputies to the commune, one for every 200 qualified inhabitants. Everyone who votes for the commune owes ten days’ labor. And there is yet another gradation, as the communes elect someone to the department, and the department elects deputies to the National Assembly—each deputy needing to pay a mark of silver. While Burke does not object per se to the attention to property within this system, he points out that it is “unsupportable” according the French system.
Burke’s major point in examining this system of representation is that, though it was founded on the pretense of making everyone equal, it eventually rests on property ownership after all, and there is also a substantial distance between people and their government. The practical outworking, then, is inconsistent with the celebrated theory of equality. Equality proves to be much more difficult to create in practice than it is to declare in the abstract.
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On the third basis, contribution, “they have more completely lost sight of their rights of men,” because it rests completely on property. The committee claims that this expectation does not infringe on citizens’ rights because it is only meant to ensure proportionality between cities; but Burke argues that it inevitably creates an aristocracy of the rich. It does indeed render an individual less important whose votes for three members as one who votes for ten; the franchises are not equal. The wealthy have more power.
Not only does property factor in to the representation system, but it eventually reinforces existing wealth, which is out of step with the Revolution’s rationalist attempts to impose equality.
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Burke says that these three bases are not consistent with one another, because the basis of population operates on a different basis from those of territory and contribution—the latter two being of an inevitably aristocratic nature. Much depends on the population of the size of the cantons within a commune, whether it contains a trading or manufacturing town, and other factors which affect the number of representatives a canton will be able to send to the Assembly, as Burke demonstrates through several mathematical comparisons. The end result, he says, is a “fantastical and unjust inequality between mass and mass.” The system is internally inconsistent, thanks to the ideas of “your philosophers.”
Burke sums up his examination of the representation system by showing how certain historic and natural circumstances, like the location and wealth of different cities, cannot be smoothed out by a “philosophical” attempt to impose consistency and uniformity. This is an example of how abstract theories, because they are removed from on-the-ground realities, often poorly serve their intended ends, according to Burke’s outlook.
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Burke further contends that France’s scheme will divide France into competing republics. In “barbarously” dividing up their country according to this geometric scheme, Burke argues that their rulers “treat France exactly like a country of conquest.” They have “destroyed the bonds of their union, under colour of providing for the independence of each of their cities.” These competing cantons will find themselves “strangers to one another” and will look more like military colonies back in the waning days of the Roman Empire. “Your child comes into the world with the symptoms of death.”
One problem with this new system of representation is that it will actually render France more internally divided, just in a different way than before. It’s an attempt to create something new and fresh, but someone who’s mindful of history—which the revolutionaries aren’t—would recognize that it’s reminiscent of systems that portended the demise of their societies. It also divides up French citizens in arbitrary ways.
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Burke argues that the ancient legislators of republics understood that they “had to do with men, and they were obliged to study human nature.” Modern legislators, by contrast, “confound all sorts of citizens […] into one homogeneous mass,” and the mass into “incoherent republics.” Their preoccupation with numbers abstracts them too much from on-the-ground realities. Burke says that the British system is completely different, because there is a much closer relationship between a representative and his people, whereas in France, there are three elections and two sets of magistrates between these representative and citizen. The people really do not substantially contribute to their governance.
Burke maintains that older political theorists were more closely in touch with concrete realities than today’s revolutionaries are. Revolutionaries theorize about humanity as a whole and end up harming actual communities, undercutting their own supposed aims in so doing.
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Finding this system incoherent, Burke looks at the “cement” for the constitution, to be found in the confiscation, the supreme power of Paris, and the army. The confiscation, with its related paper currency, could suffice to hold things together for a while; however, the confiscation might not prove to be sufficient to support the paper coinage in the long run, which will only lead to confusion. Since the currency is not based on real money and is forcibly substituted for the coin of the kingdom, it will mainly serve to put most power into the hands of the “managers and conductors of its circulation,” producing an oligarchy. The speculation-based currency, in fact, essentially turns France into “a nation of gamesters,” and the many are at the mercy of the few who oversee the game, to the inevitably disadvantage of the rural peasant.
Here, Burke looks at those institutions that are intended to hold the French government together. He’s already discussed the confiscation of Church lands at length. There is no evidence, in his view, that the confiscation will fulfill its intended goals. It’s also a confusing system that the common people can’t easily understand, since it’s based on speculative money. This means that those with the power and knowledge to game the system will inevitably thrive better under this system. It doesn’t actually equalize society whatsoever.
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