Part of Burke’s rationale for adhering to tradition is his preference for a kind of intergenerational wisdom grounded in nature. He describes the superiority of English government thus: “This policy [of an inherited crown, inherited properties and privileges, etc.] appears to me to be the result of profound reflection; or rather the happy effect of following nature, which is wisdom without reflection, and above it.” Burke upholds the hereditary monarchy of England, in other words, as a system which “follow[s] nature,” hence adhering to a timeless wisdom that his revolutionary contemporaries reject, to their harm. By contrasting the English system as grounded in such wisdom, or “prejudice,” and the French as detached from it, Burke argues that the French Revolution is “unnatural” and thus unsustainable.
With reference to the particular example of the hereditary system, Burke argues that England’s government goes with the grain of nature, while France’s new system goes against it. “Our political system is placed in a just correspondence and symmetry with the order of the world […] wherein […] the whole, at one time, is never old, or middle-aged, or young, but in a condition of unchangeable constancy, [it] moves on through the varied tenour of perpetual decay, fall, renovation, and progression.” In other words, because the system—the passing down of lands, titles, and the crown within a family line—follows a predictable pattern from one generation to the next, it is like a renewable resource with its various parts always at different points in a healthy cycle of growth, death, and rebirth. This pattern for the state enables an “organic” blend of old and new, so England’s government is neither obsolete nor too cutting-edge.
Burke argues that revolutionary France’s rejection of the hereditary system contains the seeds of its own destruction, because it goes against nature. He claims that such ordinary citizens as hairdressers and candlemakers “ought not to suffer oppression from the state; but the state suffers oppression, if such as they […] are permitted to rule. In this you think you are combating prejudice, but you are at war with nature.” In contrast to England’s orderly, self-renewing system, France’s system lacks a built-in means of perpetuating itself, in Burke’s view, because it isn’t anchored in a stable, propertied succession that’s rooted in the land itself.
Although reliance on hereditary wealth and rank can be abused, “they are too rashly slighted in shallow speculations of the petulant, assuming, short-sighted coxcombs of philosophy. Some decent regulated preeminence, some preference (not exclusive appropriation) given to birth, is neither unnatural, nor unjust...” Ultimately, Burke sees more danger in the presumptions of those who ignore succession and birth than in those who uphold them, because the former are grounded in abstract “philosophy” (even if well-intentioned), rather than in the time-tested observation and experience of nature.
Burke’s understanding of “prejudice” is also critical to his view of how government works best. In its late-18th century connotation, “prejudice” does not imply bigotry, but a “preconceived opinion” grounded in nature. Thus, revolutionary philosophy is divorced from nature, slighting “prejudices” that establish government in the received wisdom of tradition. Burke writes, “that in this enlightened age […] we are generally men of untaught feelings; that instead of casting away all our old prejudices, we cherish them to a very considerable degree […] We are afraid to put men to live and trade each on his own private stock of reason; because we suspect that this stock in each man is small, and that the individuals would do better to avail themselves of the general bank and capital of nations, and of ages.” In other words, individuals, and even entire epochs, are limited in their reasoning abilities. This is where “prejudice” supplies a needed connection to the instincts of the past—“untaught feelings” have the ability to deepen otherwise shallow rationality with tested wisdom.
Burke expands on the value of prejudice, explaining how it embeds duty within human nature: “Prejudice is of ready application in the emergency; it previously engages the mind in a steady course of wisdom and virtue, and does not leave the man hesitating in the moment of decision, sceptical, puzzled, and unresolved. Prejudice renders a man’s virtue his habit; and not a series of unconnected acts.” That is, prejudice is an instinct, founded on collective wisdom, that enables people to respond to present situations with more than superficial, reactive decisions.
Burke’s emphasis on prejudice, then, ties back to his concern for nature and history. The “enlightened” revolutionaries of France “have no respect for the wisdom of others […] They conceive, very systematically, that all things which give perpetuity are mischievous, and therefore they are at inexpiable war with all establishments.” In Burke’s view, such revolutionaries are actually at war with nature itself, because they ignore the moderating effects of prejudice, which is grounded in “perpetuity.” By contrast, England boasts a longstanding judicial system, an established church, and the notion of society as a contract not only between the living, but among generations living and dead. All these things provide a sounder precedent for governance than that provided by bare reason.
Because Burke sees “prejudice” as natural, he also sees it as being more grounded in reality than revolutionary efforts. He comments that ancient Greek and Roman political philosophers “had to do with men, and they were obliged to study human nature.” Following in this tradition, English rulers are more connected to the concrete circumstances of human lives than the French revolutionaries, with their abstracted appeals to human rights. This theme also connects, therefore, to Burke’s theme of the limits of rationalism in government.
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Nature, Tradition, and Wisdom ThemeTracker
Nature, Tradition, and Wisdom Quotes in Reflections on the Revolution in France
The third head of right […] the ‘right to form a government for ourselves,’ has, at least, as little countenance from any thing done at the Revolution, either in precedent or principle, as the two first of their claims. The Revolution was made to preserve our antient indisputable laws and liberties, and that antient constitution of government which is our only security for law and liberty. […] The very idea of the fabrication of a new government is enough to fill us with disgust and horror. We wished at the period of the Revolution, and do now wish, to derive all we possess as an inheritance from our forefathers. […] All the reformations we have hitherto made, have proceeded upon the principle of reference to antiquity; and I hope, nay I am persuaded, that all those which possibly may be made hereafter, will be carefully formed upon analogical precedent, authority, and example.
You will observe, that from Magna Charta to the Declaration of Right, it has been the uniform policy of our constitution to claim and assert our liberties, as an entailed inheritance derived to us from our forefathers, and to be transmitted to our posterity; as an estate specially belonging to the people of this kingdom without any reference whatever to any other more general or prior right. […] We have an inheritable crown; an inheritable peerage; and an house of commons and a people inheriting privileges, franchises, and liberties, from a long line of ancestors.
[…] A spirit of innovation is generally the result of a selfish temper and confined views. People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors. Besides, the people of England well know, that the idea of inheritance furnishes a sure principle of conservation, and a sure principle of transmission; without at all excluding a principle of improvement.
It is no wonder therefore, that with these ideas of every thing in their constitution and government at home, either in church or state, as illegitimate and usurped, or, at best as a vain mockery, they look abroad with an eager and passionate enthusiasm. Whilst they are possessed by these notions, it is vain to talk to them of the practice of their ancestors, the fundamental laws of their country, the fixed form of a constitution, whose merits are confirmed by the solid test of long experience, and an increasing public strength and national prosperity. They despise experience as the wisdom of unlettered men; and as for the rest, they have wrought under-ground a mine that will blow up at one grand explosion all examples of antiquity, all precedents, charters, and acts of parliament. They have ‘the rights of men.’
The science of government being therefore so practical in itself, and intended for such practical purposes, a matter which requires experience, and even more experience than any person can gain in his whole life, however sagacious and observing he may be, it is with infinite caution that any man ought to venture upon pulling down an edifice which has answered in any tolerable degree for ages the common purposes of society, or on building it up again, without having models and patterns of approved utility before his eyes. […] The nature of man is intricate; the objects of society are of the greatest possible complexity; and therefore no simple disposition or direction of power can be suitable either to man’s nature, or to the quality of his affairs. When I hear the simplicity of contrivance aimed at and boasted of in any new political constitutions, I am at no loss to decide that the artificers are grossly ignorant of their trade, or totally negligent of their duty.
All the superadded 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.
On this scheme of things, a king is but a man; a queen is but a woman; a woman is but an animal; and an animal not of the highest order. All homage paid to the sex in general as such, and without distinct views, is to be regarded as romance and folly. Regicide, and parricide, and sacrilege, are but fictions of superstition, corrupting jurisprudence by destroying its simplicity. The murder of a king, or a queen, or a bishop, or a father, are only common homicide; and if the people are by any chance, or in any way gainers by it, a sort of homicide much the most pardonable, and into which we ought not to make too severe a scrutiny.
When I assert anything else, as concerning the people of England, I speak from observation, not from authority; but I speak from the experience I have had in a pretty extensive and mixed communication with the inhabitants of this kingdom […] The vanity, restlessness, petulance, and spirit of intrigue of several petty cabals, who attempt to hide their total want of consequence in bustle and noise, and puffing, and mutual quotation of each other, makes you imagine that our contemptuous neglect of their abilities is a mark of general acquiescence in their opinions. No such thing, I assure you. Because half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine, that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field; that, of course, they are many in number; or that, after all, they are other than the little shrivelled, meagre, hopping, though loud and troublesome insects of the hour.
You see, Sir, that in this enlightened age I am bold enough to confess, that we are generally men of untaught feelings; that instead of casting away all our old prejudices, we cherish them to a very considerable degree, and, to take more shame to ourselves, we cherish them because they are prejudices; and the longer they have lasted, and the more generally they have prevailed, the more we cherish them. We are afraid to put men to live and trade each on his own private stock of reason; because we suspect that this stock in each man is small, and that the individuals would do better to avail themselves of the general bank and capital of nations, and of ages.
If unfortunately by their intrigues, their sermons, their publications, and by a confidence derived from an expected union with the counsels and forces of the French nation, they should draw considerable numbers into their faction, and in consequence should seriously attempt any thing here in imitation of what has been done with you, the event, I dare venture to prophesy, will be, that, with some trouble to their country, they will soon accomplish their own destruction. This people refused to change their law in remote ages from respect to the infallibility of popes; and they will not now alter it from a pious implicit faith in the dogmatism of philosophers; though the former was armed with the anathema and crusade, and though the latter should act with the libel and the lamp-iron.
Society is indeed a contract. Subordinate contracts for objects of mere occasional interest, may be dissolved at pleasure - but the state ought not to be considered as nothing better than a partnership agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee, callico 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. It is to be looked on with other reverence; because it is not a partnership in things subservient only to the gross animal existence of a temporary and perishable nature. It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born. Each contract of each particular state is but a clause in the great primeval 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.
The literary cabal had some years ago formed something like a regular plan for the destruction of the Christian religion. This object they pursued with a degree of zeal which hitherto had been discovered only in the propagators of some system of piety. They were possessed with a spirit of proselytism in the most fanatical degree; and from thence by an easy progress, with the spirit of persecution according to their means. What was not to be done towards their great end by any direct or immediate act, might be wrought by a longer process through the medium of opinion. To command that opinion, the first step is to establish a dominion over those who direct it. They contrived to possess themselves, with great method and perseverance, of all the avenues to literary fame.
A brave people will certainly prefer liberty, accompanied with a virtuous poverty, to a depraved and wealthy servitude. But before the price of comfort and opulence is paid, one ought to be pretty sure it is real liberty which is purchased, and that she is to be purchased at no other price. I shall always, however, consider that liberty as very equivocal in her appearance, which has not wisdom and justice for her companions; and does not lead prosperity and plenty in her train.
It is this inability to wrestle with difficulty which has obliged the arbitrary assembly of France to commence their schemes of reform with abolition and total destruction. But is it in destroying and pulling down that skill is displayed? Your mob can do this as well at least as your assemblies. The shallowest understanding, the rudest hand, is more than equal to that task. Rage and phrenzy will pull down more in half an hour, than prudence, deliberation, and foresight can build up in an hundred years. The errors and defects of old establishments are visible and palpable. It calls for little ability to point them out; and where absolute power is given, it requires but a word wholly to abolish the vice and the establishment together. […] At once to preserve and to reform is quite another thing.
