In his 1790 treatise Reflections on the Revolution in France, English statesman Edmund Burke writes to a young French aristocrat, “The very idea of the fabrication of a new government is enough to fill [the English] with disgust and horror. We wished at the period of the [1688] Revolution, and do now wish, to derive all we possess as an inheritance from our forefathers.” While the English people’s purported “horror” is grounded in a reverence for tradition, it also points to a tension in Burke’s view that history is neither to be rejected as antiquated nor woodenly copied in the present. As he explores this tension, Burke argues that the study of history should temper a society’s enthusiasm for change, but that society must also be careful in its application of insights from the past so that history doesn’t simply feed existing prejudices.
According to Burke, history is the servant of the present, providing healthy perspective on a society’s current situation and offering patterns for present action. Consideration of history gives a balanced view of one’s place in society, guiding one’s actions accordingly: “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.” In other words, people who are focused on new ideas, in Burke’s view, tend to be excessively preoccupied with their own contemporary context. If they are disinclined to consider their forebears, they are unlikely to give much thought to their descendants, either. Burke names the practice of inheritance of property as an example of a safeguard against such selfishness: “[T]he people of England well know, that the idea of inheritance furnishes a sure principle of conservation […] without at all excluding a principle of improvement.”
In the past, one can find ready-made examples for better action: “If the last generations of your country appeared without much lustre in your eyes,” Burke tells his French correspondent, “you might have passed them by, and derived your claims from a more early race of ancestors. Under a pious predilection for those ancestors, your imaginations would have realized in them a standard of virtue and wisdom, beyond the vulgar practice of the hour: and you would have risen with the example to whose imitation you aspired.” Rather than remaining stuck on recent failings, one should search further back until a suitable example is found. Taking a longer view of history is more likely to yield patterns worthy of present imitation.
Although Burke has a lofty view of history, he doesn’t argue for a slavish copying of the past. In fact, history must be studied with care, lest it be used to fuel modern prejudices. A careless reading of history can actually fuel contemporary conflict: “We do not draw the moral lessons we might from history. On the contrary, without care it may be used to vitiate our minds and to destroy our happiness. It may, in the perversion […] [furnish] offensive and defensive weapons for parties in church and state, and supply the means of keeping alive, or reviving dissensions and animosities…” For example, Burke mentions a recent dramatization of the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre (a massive anti-Protestant plot carried out by Roman Catholic nobles in 1572) which inspired Parisians to chase their archbishop into exile, on the grounds that one of his 16th-century predecessors was evil.
Such a thoughtless application of history occurs when people target individuals instead of specific vices—vices which cyclically recur throughout human history. According to Burke, “Wise men will apply their remedies to vices, not to names; to the causes of evil which are permanent, not to the occasional organs by which they act […] Otherwise you will be wise historically, a fool in practice. Seldom have two ages the same fashion in their […] modes of mischief. Wickedness is a little more inventive.” Unless the student of history is discerning in the diagnosis of such “wickedness,” the result will be blind prejudice—like giving a blanket condemnation of all clergy members instead of blaming the “vices” of an intolerant few.
Burke groups the French revolutionaries among those who “[attend] only to the shell and husk of history, [thinking] they are waging war with intolerance, pride, and cruelty,” while actually deepening contemporary divisiveness. Because the use of history is both so imperative and so inherently risky, Burke’s view of the past might best be described as a call for balance. Ignoring history leads to an inflated view of a society’s importance. On the other hand, no one should be too sweeping in the conclusions they draw from their study of history, since that study, after all, is colored by one’s own biases.
Related Themes from Other Texts
The Use and Abuse of History ThemeTracker
The Use and Abuse of History Quotes in Reflections on the Revolution in France
…[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.
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.
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.
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.
We do not draw the moral lessons we might from history. On the contrary, without care it may be used to vitiate our minds and to destroy our happiness. In history a great volume is unrolled for our instruction, drawing the materials of future wisdom from the past errors and infirmities of mankind. It may, in the perversion, serve for a magazine, furnishing offensive and defensive weapons for parties in church and state, and supply the means of keeping alive, or reviving dissensions and animosities, and adding fuel to civil fury.
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…
