When writing his Reflections, Burke was not only concerned for the future of revolutionary France, but for English factions who saw the French Revolution as a potential precedent for similar principles and actions in England. Because of this, Burke is eager to demonstrate that England’s own history—like its Glorious Revolution of 1688—was not meant to establish a pattern for a series of revolutions, but was a response limited to specific circumstances at the time. In addition, he pointedly contrasts France’s bloody revolution with the deliberative character of England’s. In these ways, Burke argues that revolution is an anomaly, and that it is best conducted in a spirit of restraint, with an eye toward preservation, not destruction.
According to Burke, revolutionary events in 17th-century England do not establish a precedent for 18th-century revolutionary sentiments, in either England or France. Burke argues that it is inappropriate for his radical contemporaries to appeal to the Glorious Revolution, a bloodless revolution in which the crown was offered to William and Mary in light of the perceived infractions of the absolutist King James II. Likewise, the Declaration of Right (a 1689 document laying out English civil rights and rights of royal succession) is not an appropriate source for them because, unlike the actions of the French Revolution, it was a “most wise, sober, and considerate declaration, drawn up by great lawyers and great statesmen, and not by warm and inexperienced enthusiasts.” In other words, though the events of 1688-1689 represented a limited break with England’s past, they were a rare occurrence for the sake of the preservation of tradition. In addition, the revolution was conducted with a temperament completely opposite to that of today’s “enthusiasts.”
“Instead of a right to choose our own governors,” as some revolutionary agitators in England have claimed, Burke holds that the Declaration of Right “declared that the succession […] was absolutely necessary ‘for the peace, quiet, and security of the realm,’” and that the succession is critical so that “subjects may safely have recourse for their protection.’” Burke then writes that “Both these acts, in which are heard the unerring, unambiguous oracles of Revolution policy, instead of countenancing the delusive […] predictions of a ‘right to choose our governors,’ prove […] how totally adverse the wisdom of the nation was from turning a case of necessity into a rule of law.” Burke explains that the Revolution of 1688 was meant to ensure a stable succession, so that the rights of the people would be secured against tyranny. His point is that, because of these broader goals, the Declaration of Right cannot rightly be claimed (as some are trying to do) as support for current revolutionary sentiments. In other words, the Revolution as a whole was a unique historical anomaly, brought about by specific, irregular circumstances, and is not a precedent for rebellious sentiments a century later. In fact, establishing a law on the basis of that event would be “against all genuine principles of jurisprudence.” Burke’s attitude toward revolutionary moments in England’s past could be summed up as follows: “An irregular, convulsive movement may be necessary to throw off an irregular, convulsive disease. But the course of succession is the healthy habit of the British constitution.” The irregularity is an unfortunate exception, not a norm.
In stark contrast to the events in England a century ago, Burke portrays the French Revolution as a bloodthirsty “spectacle,” out of keeping with the steady temperament necessary for lasting reform. In one of his most famous passages, Burke portrays the Revolution as follows: “History will record, that on the morning of the 6th of October 1789, the king and queen of France […] lay down, under the pledged security of public faith, to indulge nature in a few hours of respite […] From this sleep the queen was first startled by […] a band of cruel ruffians and assassins […] from whence this persecuted woman had but just had time to fly almost naked, and through ways unknown to the murderers had escaped to seek refuge at the feet of a king and husband, not secure of his own life for a moment.” This excerpt conveys the narrative, intentionally sensational in its tone, which Burke uses to convey the basis of the French Revolution. It’s meant to appeal to traditional English sentiments by portraying the hapless queen of France as being cruelly persecuted, and the French public as vengeful and bloodthirsty. By implied contrast, it’s also meant to bring out the supposedly deliberative, peaceful, and measured events of 1688 in England as being civilized and worthy of emulation.
Burke further argues that, though opposition to tyranny sometimes requires extreme measures, the situation in France did not rise to that level, and it was not carried out with an appropriate level of solemnity: “If it could have been made clear to me, that the king and queen of France […] were inexorable and cruel tyrants […] I should think their captivity just. If this be true, much more ought to have been done, but done, in my opinion, in another manner. The punishment of real tyrants is a noble and awful act of justice…” The French, in other words, have not given an adequate justification for their actions, much less for the ferocity of them.
Burke concludes by commending the English pattern of reform, once again, over the French one: “I think our happy situation owing to our constitution […] owing in a great measure to what we have left standing in our several reviews and reformations, as well as to what we have altered…” Burke pointedly describes the upheavals of English history not as revolutionary, but more benignly as “reviews and reformations” of existing structures. As in his discussions of the role of history and the importance of maintaining the natural order, Burke is primarily concerned with upholding continuity with the past.
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Revolution and Reform Quotes in Reflections on the Revolution in France
I flatter myself that I love a manly, moral, regulated liberty as well as any gentleman of that society, be he who he will […] But I cannot stand forward, and give praise or blame to any thing which relates to human actions, and human concerns, on a simple view of the object, as it stands stripped of every relation, in all the nakedness and solitude of metaphysical abstraction. Circumstances (which with some gentlemen pass for nothing) give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing colour, and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind. Abstractedly speaking, government, as well as liberty, is good; yet could I, in common sense, ten years ago, have felicitated France on her enjoyment of a government (for she then had a government) without enquiry what the nature of that government was, or how it was administered? […] Is it because liberty in the abstract may be classed amongst the blessings of mankind, that I am seriously to felicitate a madman, who has escaped from the protecting restraint and wholesome darkness of his cell, on his restoration to the enjoyment of light and liberty?
…[T]he political Divine proceeds dogmatically to assert, that by the principles of the Revolution the people of England have acquired three fundamental rights, all which, with him, compose one system, and lie together in one short sentence; namely, that we have acquired a right 1. ‘To choose our own governors.’ 2. ‘To cashier them for misconduct.’ 3. ‘To frame a government for ourselves.’ This new, and hitherto unheard-of bill of rights, though made in the name of the whole people, belongs to those gentlemen and their faction only. […] [The people of England] will resist the practical assertion of it with their lives and fortunes. They are bound to do so by the laws of their country, made at the time of that very Revolution, which is appealed to in favour of the fictitious rights claimed by the society which abuses its name.
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.’
History will record, that on the morning of the 6th of October 1789, the king and queen of France, after a day of confusion, alarm, dismay, and slaughter, lay down, under the pledged security of public faith, to indulge nature in a few hours of respite, and troubled melancholy repose. From this sleep the queen was first startled by the voice of the centinel at her door, who cried out to her, to save herself by flight - that this was the last proof of fidelity he could give — that they were upon him, and he was dead. Instantly he was cut down. A band of cruel ruffians and assassins, reeking with his blood, rushed into the chamber of the queen, and pierced with an hundred strokes of bayonets and poniards the bed, from whence this persecuted woman had but just had time to fly almost naked, and through ways unknown to the murderers had escaped to seek refuge at the feet of a king and husband, not secure of his own life for a moment.
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.
When all the frauds, impostures, violences, rapines, burnings, murders, confiscations, compulsory paper currencies, and every description of tyranny and cruelty employed to bring about and to uphold this revolution, have their natural effect, that is, to shock the moral sentiments of all virtuous and sober minds, the abettors of this philosophic system immediately strain their throats in a declamation against the old monarchical government of France. When they have rendered that deposed power sufficiently black, they then proceed in argument, as if all those who disapprove of their new abuses, must of course be partizans of the old; that those who reprobate their crude and violent schemes of liberty ought to be treated as advocates for servitude. I admit that their necessities do compel them to this base and contemptible fraud. Nothing can reconcile men to their proceedings and projects but the supposition that there is no third option between them, and some tyranny as odious as can be furnished by the records of history, or by the invention of poets.
I am no stranger to the faults and defects of the subverted government of France; and I think I am not inclined by nature or policy to make a panegyric upon any thing which is a just and natural object of censure. But the question is not now of the vices of that monarchy, but of its existence. Is it then true, that the French government was such as to be incapable or undeserving of reform; so that it was of absolute necessity the whole fabric should be at once pulled down, and the area cleared for the erection of a theoretic experimental edifice in its place? All France was of a different opinion in the beginning of the year 1789. […] Men have been sometimes led by degrees, sometimes hurried into things, […] they never would have permitted the most remote approach.
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.
Your citizens of Paris formerly had lent themselves as the ready instruments to slaughter the followers of Calvin, at the infamous massacre of St. Bartholomew. What should we say to those who could think of retaliating on the Parisians of this day the abominations and horrors of that time? They are indeed brought to abhor that massacre. Ferocious as they are, it is not difficult to make them dislike it; because the politicians and fashionable teachers have no interest in giving their passions exactly the same direction. Still however they find it their interest to keep the same savage dispositions alive. It was but the other day that they caused this very massacre to be acted on the stage for the diversion of the descendants of those who committed it. In this tragic farce they produced the Cardinal of Lorraine in his robes of function, ordering general slaughter. Was this spectacle intended to make the Parisians abhor persecution, and loath the effusion of blood? No, it was to teach them to persecute their own pastors…
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.
