Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Reflections on the Revolution in France, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Use and Abuse of History
Nature, Tradition, and Wisdom
Revolution and Reform
Theory vs. Practicality
Summary
Analysis
Burke says that the principles of the Glorious Revolution must be sought in the Declaration of Right—a “most wise, sober, and considerate declaration, drawn up by great lawyers and great statesmen, and not by warm and inexperienced enthusiasts.” This document, he says, makes no suggestion regarding those “rights” Price has claimed were established by the Revolution.
The Declaration of Right was a document presented to William and Mary, inviting them to become the sovereigns of England following the deposition of James II. Burke pointedly contrasts the creators of this document with “enthusiasts” like Price, arguing that the Declaration does not provide support for those principles Price wishes to derive from the Revolution.
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The Declaration of Right “is the corner-stone of our constitution,” and “its fundamental principles [are] for ever settled.” The purpose of the document was to “[declare] the rights and liberties of the subject, and [to settle] the succession of the crown.” The rights and succession are purposefully declared side by side.
Burke provides historical background on the Declaration of Right and shows how he believes it supports his argument. He underlines how the Declaration placed the concerns of the subject side by side with the matter of the crown’s succession, suggesting that these issues are inextricably connected. Further, the Declaration is intended to apply in perpetuity.
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A few years after the Declaration of Right, when neither King William nor the Princess, later Queen Anne, had produced any heirs, there was another opportunity to consider the matter of “election” to the crown. However, the legislature did not call for election; rather, they more precisely declined the lines of succession. They also incorporated “our liberties, and an hereditary succession” within the same act of Parliament.
Burke refers to the 1701 Act of Settlement. He does this to point out that past legislators had plenty of opportunity to consider the type of election Price favors. However, they did not do so; instead, they took care to ensure that the hereditary succession would continue, seeing this concern as directly guaranteeing the rights of the people, not as a denial of them.
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The Act of Settlement saw the “certainty in the succession” of the crown as an aspect of ensuring that subjects “safely have recourse for their protection.” Both the Act of Settlement and the Declaration of Right contain “the unerring, unambiguous oracles” of the Glorious Revolution. By contrast, today’s so-called revolutionaries, like Price, advance “delusive […] predictions.” The legislators who drew up the two earlier documents understood that it’s unwise to turn “a case of necessity into a rule of law.”
Burke continues to build his case that the previous century’s concern for succession was seen as inseparable from the rights of the people. His sharply contrasting rhetoric—comparing infallible oracles with mere fortune-telling—is meant to give weight to the wisdom of the past against the uninformed passions of the present. Further, he anticipates his coming discussion of the French Revolution by arguing that one “necessary” revolution should not be treated as a precedent.
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Burke again asserts that King William’s ascending the throne was “a temporary deviation” from strict succession, but that the principles of jurisprudence forbid establishing a principle from a special case. If “popular choice” was to become the principle for English monarchs, then surely this would have been the time to establish that principle. In fact, anyone who is familiar with history, argues Burke, knows that many in Parliament were reluctant to crown William, since Mary was the lineal descendant of the deposed James, but they acted from necessity, not from choice.
Burke drives home his point that William’s ascent to the throne was a historical anomaly, something which William’s contemporaries did not see as a basis for future revolt. And if they had intended to open the succession to popular elections, they would have made this clear at the time. His reasoning is intended to undermine Price’s reasoning one logical step at a time.
Themes
Finally, Burke points out the pledge which Parliament attached to their recognition of the new monarchs, submitting “themselves, their heirs and posterities forever” to William and Mary. Burke says that he does not desire to “understand the principles of the Revolution better than those by whom it was brought about” or to read “mysteries” into a clear document.
Burke’s critique of Price indirectly accuses him and his revolutionary brethren of willfully misreading the documents of the Glorious Revolution, wanting them to yield arcane meanings that a straightforward reading of the text plainly denies—that is, misusing history for their own ends.
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Burke goes on that it’s entirely possible to reconcile “fixed rule” with “deviation,” and succession with the possibility of change in an emergency. After all, “a state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.” The principles of “conservation and correction” have operated together throughout English history. For example, following the English Civil War and the Revolution, the nation had lost its traditional “bond of union,” yet this did not “dissolve the whole fabric.” Rather, it was possible to “[regenerate] the deficient part” of the government using those parts that remained whole—as when the law of succession was altered to make it clear that only Protestants could inherit the throne.
Burke explains how stability and change are not mutually exclusive. Such reconciliation, in fact, is key to his view of governance. A state must retain some flexibility—some mechanism for reform—in order to remain healthy and whole. Burke uses one of the very same examples Price appeals to in order to further establish this point—the Revolution was not a rupture, but a means of preserving continuity.
Themes
Burke sums up this part of his argument by saying that the radicals of the Revolution Society “see nothing [in the Glorious Revolution] but the deviation from the constitution; and they take the deviation from the principle for the principle.” They fail to consider the implications of saying that only an elected sovereign is valid; if that were true, then the acts of previous, un-elected sovereigns aren’t valid, either. Therefore, insisting on election rather than succession “[stains] the throne of England with the blot of a continual usurpation,” and much of the heritage of English law and liberty would be called into question.
Burke portrays the Revolution Society as being too narrow in its interpretation of history and thus too short-sighted regarding the future. The “rights” they champion, if carried to their logical conclusions, would actually serve to undermine the very basis of English liberty and undo much that the radicals presumably wish to maintain. By implication, then, the radicals fail to adequately account for preservation in their view of history, as Burke does.
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Burke explains that England’s past experience has shown her no other method for the preservation of liberty than the hereditary crown. While “an irregular, convulsive movement may be necessary to throw off an irregular, convulsive disease,” succession is “the healthy habit of the British constitution.” The fact that they knowingly chose a foreign line (the Hanoverian descendants of James I), with all the risk and inconvenience this step entailed, shows that the legislature acted with full conviction.
Burke continues to argue that the continuance of the hereditary succession is for the benefit of the English people. He describes revolution as a kind of emergency treatment in the event of disease and succession as the normal, healthy equilibrium which England must strive to maintain. England went to great lengths to maintain it following the Revolution, Burke says—making the day’s radicals look presumptuous and unserious by comparison.
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Burke explains that it’s necessary to belabor this point because of the increase in public revolutionary teaching of late, in settings such as Price’s pulpit, and in the widespread contempt for “all ancient institutions,” and the preference for “present […] convenience.” He tells Depont that he mustn’t be taken in by “counterfeit wares” smuggled across the English channel as “raw commodities of British growth though wholly alien,” then smuggled back to England in French guise.
Burke describes the taste for revolutionary sentiment in terms of a general distaste for the old in favor of the new, in keeping with his stress on the value of history and nature throughout. He uses the analogy of smuggling counterfeit goods as a metaphor for the dissemination of ideas of questionable origin; that is, ideas are often attributed to attractive sources in order to make them more palatable.
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