Reflections on the Revolution in France

In this quote, near the beginning of Burke’s Reflections, Burke addresses his correspondent’s assumption that Burke shares the Revolution Society’s enthusiasm for the ongoing French Revolution. The Society was a group founded in commemoration of England’s Glorious Revolution a century earlier, which now endorsed the French Revolution as consistent with English political principles. Burke argues that he loves “liberty” as much as any member of the Revolution Society. However, he argues that an abstract “liberty” is meaningless without consideration of the particular circumstances surrounding it. Without a holistic understanding of the situation, it’s impossible to judge whether a political event is good or bad. With a dig at France’s currently disordered political situation, Burke explains that, for example, it would make no sense to congratulate France on merely possessing a government, without knowing the specifics of that government’s structure and conduct. Likewise, he wouldn’t congratulate a “madman” for his “liberty,” when, in fact, that man’s release would pose a threat to himself and society. These arguments fit with Burke’s later insistence that practical application of a government’s principles is crucial to its functioning—good theories alone are insufficient.

In this section, Burke has been examining a sermon given by radical dissenting preacher Richard Price in commemoration of England’s Glorious Revolution. In that sermon, Price asserts that, in accordance with the 1688 Revolution’s principles, the English people have the right to choose their rulers, to depose those rulers if they misbehave, and to frame their own government. Burke disagrees with Price that the English possess these rights. To disprove Price’s case, Burke will next attempt to demonstrate that, far from establishing these three “rights,” the laws established after the Glorious Revolution actually prohibit such rights. Burke’s argument that Price’s alleged “rights” are not, in fact, traditionally English principles will also serve a greater rhetorical purpose: allowing Burke to sever Price’s supposed link between the English and French Revolutions. This argument is part of Burke’s theme, throughout the Reflections, that history is frequently deployed in favor of suspect arguments and must therefore be studied and used with care. He makes his view clear with his remark that the Revolution Society “abuses [the] name” of the Glorious Revolution.

As Burke continues dissecting the radical sermon of Richard Price, he turns to Price’s claim that the English people have the right to determine their own form of government. Having already disposed of Price’s claim that the English people can elect and dispose of their rulers at will, he now uses his refutation of this third claim to make a significant rhetorical shift. Burke argues that not only did the Glorious Revolution not set a precedent for choosing one’s own government, but that the framers of that Revolution were more interested in following historical precedents than in establishing new ones. In fact, their overriding concern was to preserve existing liberties and forms. Burke argues that the English of his day should share those concerns. A connection to antiquity is the basis for “reformation”—a point that helps Burke draw a distinction, consistent throughout Reflections, between reform (which respects history) and radical revolution (which rejects it).

As Burke continues to explore the nature of English liberty, particularly how this principle is embedded in history, he names two significant documents that have preserved English rights for centuries. One of these, The Magna Charta (which means “Great Charter”) was issued in 1215 by King John. Apart from clauses specific to John’s reign, the Magna Charta stipulates that everyone, including the monarch, must be subject to the law—a claim that remained key to future British constitutionalism. Another, The Declaration of Right (1689) details the absolutism of the newly deposed King James II and states those rights to which all English citizens are entitled (and which England’s monarchs must abide by from now on). By appealing to these two historic documents, Burke seeks to establish that England has traditionally been committed to liberty, and that revolutionary measures are not necessary in order to secure it. Burke further argues that people who fail to look to history—implicitly the French revolutionaries—have an inadequate supply of wisdom for the future. He uses the English experience as evidence both that tradition is superior to innovation, and that tradition in no way precludes healthy reform.

Having discussed the English people’s inheritance of liberty, Burke criticizes those English radicals, like Richard Price and members of the Revolution Society, who look away from their birthright and instead covet the perceived revolutionary gains of France. Burke’s point is that, when people fail to appreciate their ancestral liberties, it is fruitless to try to dissuade them from pursuing novelties. One of Burke’s themes in Reflections is that established practices, wisdom gained by experience, and the proofs of prosperity are of more value than abstract, untested theories that seek to make a clean break with what has gone before. The French Revolution’s Declaration of the Rights of Man (1789), in contrast to England’s culturally specific constitutional documents, proclaimed universal rights applying to humanity in general. Burke goes on to explain that, although he does not deny that such universal rights (such as equality, safety from oppression, and the liberty to act as one wishes without harming others) do exist, they cannot serve as the basis for governing a specific nation. Governance, in his view, is ineffectual when it is not grounded in knowledge of, and accountability to, a specific people.

In this quote Burke expands on his understanding of government and the inadequacy of “natural rights” as a foundation for it. Again, the issue for Burke is not whether such basic human rights exist; he acknowledges that they do. However, he believes that their universality cannot easily be translated into practical governance. Governing is inherently concrete for Burke; it’s a way of providing what people require in order to live. Figuring out what those needs are, and how to supply them, requires an intimate acquaintance with human beings in particular, not humanity in the abstract. This is the meaning of Burke’s query about food and medicine—he believes it serves little good to theorize about people’s rights to such things; government only has a meaningful role in facilitating access to them. That’s why a farmer or a doctor would, in this case, be far more useful than an academic, who probably has no firsthand experience of providing for people’s needs.

Here, Burke continues his discussion of the science of government, which, in his view, is not something that can simply be taught in a university. Since government is primarily focused on the practical, it requires lived experience. Because it’s such a complex matter, government is not even the province of a single wise person. This ties into Burke’s emphasis on history and tradition. If no individual can adequately handle the weight of governing, it follows that no single generation is equal to the task, either—the wisdom of “ages” must be duly considered and handled with reverence. Burke’s belief in the complexity of government is also tied to his emphasis on the complexity of human nature. In fact, the two things are inseparable. This is why Burke rejects as impracticable simplistic laws with abstract justifications: they are unlikely to be able to account for the variety and particularity of human life.

This is a famous passage in Reflections, and with its sense of narrative drama, it is a marked departure from the tone and style of the rest of the work. It dramatizes the March on Versailles, a pivotal moment in the French Revolution as a whole. The march began when women rioted in the marketplace over the high price of bread; spurred on by revolutionaries, they marched on the royal palace at Versailles, besieged the palace, and compelled the royal family to accompany them back to Paris the next day. “History” does not, in fact, record that events unfolded in precisely this way; Burke is clearly taking some poetic license. But Burke’s point is to create sympathy for the harried figure of Queen Marie Antoinette as she is mercilessly pursued from her bedchamber—a place of domestic repose cruelly broken into by bloodthirsty radicals. For Burke, this scene of inhumanity and rupture symbolizes the injustice of the shift of power in the Revolution’s favor. It is meant to shock and to instill doubt as to the morality of revolutionary sentiments.

In this passage, Burke argues that chivalry is disappearing from Europe and especially from France. He views chivalry as a healthy phenomenon for society, one which preserves the natural distinctions between classes and promotes harmonious relationships among them. But now, revolutionary fervor undermines chivalry and threatens the bonds of civil society. Here Burke illustrates how traditional views are successively undone: When there is no distinction between royalty and the common people, soon the queen is not just viewed as a mere woman, but as less than human as well. When the king is no longer viewed as a class apart, atrocities like regicide become thinkable; people are persuaded that such acts even promote the public good. While these demotions sound extreme, Burke’s larger argument is that the “moral imagination” is a vital component of society, and when people become convinced that elements of their traditional worldview—like chivalry—are outmoded, it is difficult to predict what the downstream societal effects might be.

Here Burke argues that, whatever impression his correspondent Depont has received, the larger part of the English public does not support revolutionary sentiments. Those that do, like the Revolution Society, are insignificant. He claims that such groups create an exaggerated impression of their size and influence by publishing dramatic statements of their ideals (like Price’s sermon, which Burke has just finished critiquing) and thus amplifying one another’s views. However, Burke urges Depont not to suppose that the broader public’s apparent silence means that they assent to radical views. They are like the implacable cattle, who calmly go about their age-old business, while the grasshoppers make a harmless nuisance of themselves. Burke makes the point that there isn’t a notable revolutionary momentum in England, even if the Revolution Society’s contacts in Paris have given Depont that impression. However, at the same time, Burke really is concerned about the inroads of French revolutionary thought in England, or he would not be going to such lengths to publicly refute such views.

In this passage, Burke introduces his understanding of “prejudice” and its significance in his view of politics. Prejudice, at this time, didn’t have an automatic connotation of bigotry. Rather, Burke uses this term to mean the preconceptions that come before any kind of reason-based appraisal (“untaught feelings”). He sets up prejudice against the kind of rationalism that infused revolutionary thought, wanting to show how these different forms of belief have different practical implications. For Burke, long-held prejudices are justifiable because of their antiquity. They provide a stable basis for the continuation of civil society, as well as for reformation where needed. For the revolutionary, on the other hand, prejudices deserve to be overthrown because they are old and outdated. Society should be restructured without the fetters of prejudice, appealing to unbiased reason instead. Thus, prejudice provides a helpful window into the differences between Burke’s political outlook and the revolutionary outlook, as he portrays it.

Burke is arguing that it is unlikely that French revolutionary sentiments will make significant inroads into English society. Even if groups like the Revolution Society manage to stir up interest in French events, attempts to foment similar revolution are unlikely to generate momentum in England. Significantly, Burke makes this point, in part, by recalling events from English history—the comment on infallibility of popes likely refers to repeated papal attempts to impose Rome’s appointees to English bishoprics. He also makes a comparison that recurs elsewhere in Reflections, likening the views of France’s political “philosophers” to a dogmatic religious faith—here, a faith that makes the same demands on people’s consciences as the medieval Catholic Church (the “lamp-iron” might refer to public hangings in revolutionary Paris). His overall argument is that England does not take kindly to the incursions of foreign ideas into its way of life, because it is so firmly founded on its own history and traditions. He also reinforces his portrayal of the Revolution as a kind of blind dogmatism that tries to enforce its ideas by violence, in contrast to the English way that is confident in its roots and cannot be forced, nor does it seek to force others.

In this part of Reflections, Burke is discussing the complexity of government, and, in light of that complexity, the gravity with which anyone should approach an alteration of existing structures. However, the complexity is not just a matter of technical intricacy, but of accountability to others. Before Edmund Burke, other Enlightenment-era political theorists had worked with the concept of the social contract: a way of talking about the relationship between the state and the individual. The most notable of these was John Locke, whose Second Treatise of Government (1689) had envisioned the state as a contract between citizens who give up certain freedoms to the state (such as violence) in exchange for other freedoms. Here, however, Burke is not just interested in contracts as agreements regarding temporal goods, or even regarding the ordering of everyday society. He envisions society as a contract regarding more than “temporary and perishable” matters—rather, as a contract among all generations, past and future. This idea allows Burke to connect matters of practical governance to his cherished emphasis on the importance of history, nature, and tradition, as well as to caution his audience regarding the propriety of revolutions, which inevitably disrupt this ongoing spiritual “contract.”

As Burke examines how the French Revolution was brought about, he considers how the traditional structures of the Christian faith were systematically driven out of French society. At the time Burke wrote Reflections, the Declaration of the Rights of Man had recently proclaimed freedom of religious beliefs, as long as “their manifestation does not trouble the public order.” The National Assembly had also begun seizing church properties in order to deal with the country’s massive debt. However, Burke is most concerned here about the swaying of public opinion through an alliance between the monied class and certain “men of letters,” who have been fomenting distrust and even bigotry against the church by gaining control of “mediums of opinion.” One example of how this process had gotten underway earlier in the Enlightenment is d’Alembert’s and Diderot’s 35-volume Encyclopedia, which subordinated theology to philosophy. Burke fears that this cultural shift is becoming more fanatical, threatening the place that religion has traditionally occupied in binding society together. His concerns were not entirely misplaced, as later in the 1790s, the Christian calendar was replaced with a post-Revolutionary one, traditional festivals were replaced with Festivals of Liberty, Reason and the Supreme Being, and the French government briefly mandated the deistic Cult of the Supreme Being.

Burke continues his discussion of the way that radicals have attempted to win France over to a revolutionary mindset. First, the people have been worn down by the shocking nature of revolutionary activity—everything from the march on the palace of Versailles (which Burke himself had so dramatically portrayed earlier) to the confiscation of church lands has rattled people’s expectations about their government and their way of life. Once people’s “moral sentiments” were suitably shocked, the revolutionaries took advantage of this by tearing down the old monarchical government, hoping that people would now be more disposed to agree. Finally, they stoke deeper divisions within society by acting as if any objection to their more extreme measures puts someone on the side of the king, who has already been rejected as tyrannical. Burke calls this cynical process a “contemptible fraud,” as it is meant to serve those who are already in power, making people who might be inclined to protest feel bound to support them.

Burke reflects on the progress of the French Revolution, first by granting that there certainly were censurable “vices” that the French rightly sought to address. While Burke doesn’t quarrel with the necessity of reform, he tries to show that there is a big difference between addressing problems and tearing down existing structures and starting fresh. Was the existing monarchy so irredeemable, he asks, that it needed to be eliminated in favor of something that had never been tried before? He further argues that nobody in France was thinking this way at the beginning of 1789, and he suggests that as recently as a year before, most people in government were inclined to undertake reforms, not seek revolution. He portrays the revolution as a train of events that quickly got out of control, sweeping people along who might otherwise have been content to take a more incremental approach to fixing the government’s ills. In this way, Burke is able to portray his stance as a moderate position between outdated monarchy and radical revolution. This is in keeping with his inclination to favor reform as both open to change but also consistent with past tradition.

In this section, Burke has just finished discussing statistics in revolutionary Paris, such as high rates of unemployment and mendicancy (begging). He argues that the revolution has harmed France’s economy and standard of living rather than relieving the country’s financial woes. He uses these points to bolster his anti-revolutionary stance. After all, he argues, there is nothing inherently wrong with poverty, as long as it is joined to genuine liberty. But he implies that the supposed “liberty” secured by the Revolution is a counterfeit one. Its fruits of increased poverty and makeshift societal changes suggest that it was undertaken hastily and without measured consideration. The present conditions in France, in short, were a high price to pay for something that might turn out to hurt the people more. Burke shows his characteristic caution regarding the propriety of revolutions—in his view, they tend to damage too much that has been handed down for generations and might yet be worth preserving.

In this quote, Burke shows his understanding of the use and misuse of history. He doesn’t argue for a straightforward, wooden application of the lessons of the past. Rather, he argues that it must be studied and applied with great care. Misapplying history can backfire in the present, making present conditions worse than they were before. If it’s uncritically applied, history can become a “magazine”—a place for storing ammunition—to stoke present-day division, prejudice, and even violence. People can easily look into history and associate themselves, or their enemies, with figures and events that help strengthen their own self-conception, deepening polarization. So, Burke’s valorization of history is not an argument for a simple, moralistic reading of the past, or one that discourages change altogether. Instead, he recognizes that the complexities of both past and present must be accounted for and not carelessly mixed to serve rhetorical purposes.

Here, Burke builds on his argument regarding the use of history, providing a clear example. The St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre was an outbreak of mob violence by Catholics against Huguenots (French Protestants) in 1572. Burke argues that nobody in present-day Paris sides with the persecutors in that terrible event, and that the descendants of the perpetrators shouldn’t be punished for it, either. However, the event was recently reenacted in a stage play, with a very specific contemporary application in mind. Burke says that the portrayal of the Cardinal of Lorraine—an infamously scheming churchman suspected of complicity in the Massacre—was intended to serve the anti-clerical sentiments of modern Paris. The sight of the hated Cardinal would provoke people to turn against the present Archbishop of Paris, whose reputation, Burke says, is far less objectionable. This illustration shows how history can be used not to teach a general principle—that persecution and religiously-motivated violence are immoral, for example—but instead to manipulate people toward specific factional ends.

In this quote, Burke returns to his theme that government is a complex matter. He argues that the current revolutionary government of France is especially ill-suited to the task, because they lack the patience necessary to undertake sound, long-lasting reforms. He associates revolution primarily with the task of pulling things down and destroying existing structures—something, he argues, that a mere mob could do, since it doesn’t require any particular skill. From this perspective, easy to identify problems and violently rise up against them. It’s another skill altogether to figure out how to address weaknesses and failings in a non-destructive manner. Here Burke draws a sharp distinction between reform and revolution. The latter, in his view, can hardly be called real governance, and it requires little more than anger and motivation. Reform requires discernment, a respect for the past, and foresight as well. Thus, this quote sums up significant central themes in Burke’s thought. In his view, workable change requires genuine knowledge of the past, and revolutionary sentiments fail in this respect because they are grounded more on untested theory than on time-tested observations.

In this quote, near the beginning of Burke’s Reflections, Burke addresses his correspondent’s assumption that Burke shares the Revolution Society’s enthusiasm for the ongoing French Revolution. The Society was a group founded in commemoration of England’s Glorious Revolution a century earlier, which now endorsed the French Revolution as consistent with English political principles. Burke argues that he loves “liberty” as much as any member of the Revolution Society. However, he argues that an abstract “liberty” is meaningless without consideration of the particular circumstances surrounding it. Without a holistic understanding of the situation, it’s impossible to judge whether a political event is good or bad. With a dig at France’s currently disordered political situation, Burke explains that, for example, it would make no sense to congratulate France on merely possessing a government, without knowing the specifics of that government’s structure and conduct. Likewise, he wouldn’t congratulate a “madman” for his “liberty,” when, in fact, that man’s release would pose a threat to himself and society. These arguments fit with Burke’s later insistence that practical application of a government’s principles is crucial to its functioning—good theories alone are insufficient.

In this section, Burke has been examining a sermon given by radical dissenting preacher Richard Price in commemoration of England’s Glorious Revolution. In that sermon, Price asserts that, in accordance with the 1688 Revolution’s principles, the English people have the right to choose their rulers, to depose those rulers if they misbehave, and to frame their own government. Burke disagrees with Price that the English possess these rights. To disprove Price’s case, Burke will next attempt to demonstrate that, far from establishing these three “rights,” the laws established after the Glorious Revolution actually prohibit such rights. Burke’s argument that Price’s alleged “rights” are not, in fact, traditionally English principles will also serve a greater rhetorical purpose: allowing Burke to sever Price’s supposed link between the English and French Revolutions. This argument is part of Burke’s theme, throughout the Reflections, that history is frequently deployed in favor of suspect arguments and must therefore be studied and used with care. He makes his view clear with his remark that the Revolution Society “abuses [the] name” of the Glorious Revolution.

As Burke continues dissecting the radical sermon of Richard Price, he turns to Price’s claim that the English people have the right to determine their own form of government. Having already disposed of Price’s claim that the English people can elect and dispose of their rulers at will, he now uses his refutation of this third claim to make a significant rhetorical shift. Burke argues that not only did the Glorious Revolution not set a precedent for choosing one’s own government, but that the framers of that Revolution were more interested in following historical precedents than in establishing new ones. In fact, their overriding concern was to preserve existing liberties and forms. Burke argues that the English of his day should share those concerns. A connection to antiquity is the basis for “reformation”—a point that helps Burke draw a distinction, consistent throughout Reflections, between reform (which respects history) and radical revolution (which rejects it).

As Burke continues to explore the nature of English liberty, particularly how this principle is embedded in history, he names two significant documents that have preserved English rights for centuries. One of these, The Magna Charta (which means “Great Charter”) was issued in 1215 by King John. Apart from clauses specific to John’s reign, the Magna Charta stipulates that everyone, including the monarch, must be subject to the law—a claim that remained key to future British constitutionalism. Another, The Declaration of Right (1689) details the absolutism of the newly deposed King James II and states those rights to which all English citizens are entitled (and which England’s monarchs must abide by from now on). By appealing to these two historic documents, Burke seeks to establish that England has traditionally been committed to liberty, and that revolutionary measures are not necessary in order to secure it. Burke further argues that people who fail to look to history—implicitly the French revolutionaries—have an inadequate supply of wisdom for the future. He uses the English experience as evidence both that tradition is superior to innovation, and that tradition in no way precludes healthy reform.

Having discussed the English people’s inheritance of liberty, Burke criticizes those English radicals, like Richard Price and members of the Revolution Society, who look away from their birthright and instead covet the perceived revolutionary gains of France. Burke’s point is that, when people fail to appreciate their ancestral liberties, it is fruitless to try to dissuade them from pursuing novelties. One of Burke’s themes in Reflections is that established practices, wisdom gained by experience, and the proofs of prosperity are of more value than abstract, untested theories that seek to make a clean break with what has gone before. The French Revolution’s Declaration of the Rights of Man (1789), in contrast to England’s culturally specific constitutional documents, proclaimed universal rights applying to humanity in general. Burke goes on to explain that, although he does not deny that such universal rights (such as equality, safety from oppression, and the liberty to act as one wishes without harming others) do exist, they cannot serve as the basis for governing a specific nation. Governance, in his view, is ineffectual when it is not grounded in knowledge of, and accountability to, a specific people.

In this quote Burke expands on his understanding of government and the inadequacy of “natural rights” as a foundation for it. Again, the issue for Burke is not whether such basic human rights exist; he acknowledges that they do. However, he believes that their universality cannot easily be translated into practical governance. Governing is inherently concrete for Burke; it’s a way of providing what people require in order to live. Figuring out what those needs are, and how to supply them, requires an intimate acquaintance with human beings in particular, not humanity in the abstract. This is the meaning of Burke’s query about food and medicine—he believes it serves little good to theorize about people’s rights to such things; government only has a meaningful role in facilitating access to them. That’s why a farmer or a doctor would, in this case, be far more useful than an academic, who probably has no firsthand experience of providing for people’s needs.

Here, Burke continues his discussion of the science of government, which, in his view, is not something that can simply be taught in a university. Since government is primarily focused on the practical, it requires lived experience. Because it’s such a complex matter, government is not even the province of a single wise person. This ties into Burke’s emphasis on history and tradition. If no individual can adequately handle the weight of governing, it follows that no single generation is equal to the task, either—the wisdom of “ages” must be duly considered and handled with reverence. Burke’s belief in the complexity of government is also tied to his emphasis on the complexity of human nature. In fact, the two things are inseparable. This is why Burke rejects as impracticable simplistic laws with abstract justifications: they are unlikely to be able to account for the variety and particularity of human life.

This is a famous passage in Reflections, and with its sense of narrative drama, it is a marked departure from the tone and style of the rest of the work. It dramatizes the March on Versailles, a pivotal moment in the French Revolution as a whole. The march began when women rioted in the marketplace over the high price of bread; spurred on by revolutionaries, they marched on the royal palace at Versailles, besieged the palace, and compelled the royal family to accompany them back to Paris the next day. “History” does not, in fact, record that events unfolded in precisely this way; Burke is clearly taking some poetic license. But Burke’s point is to create sympathy for the harried figure of Queen Marie Antoinette as she is mercilessly pursued from her bedchamber—a place of domestic repose cruelly broken into by bloodthirsty radicals. For Burke, this scene of inhumanity and rupture symbolizes the injustice of the shift of power in the Revolution’s favor. It is meant to shock and to instill doubt as to the morality of revolutionary sentiments.

In this passage, Burke argues that chivalry is disappearing from Europe and especially from France. He views chivalry as a healthy phenomenon for society, one which preserves the natural distinctions between classes and promotes harmonious relationships among them. But now, revolutionary fervor undermines chivalry and threatens the bonds of civil society. Here Burke illustrates how traditional views are successively undone: When there is no distinction between royalty and the common people, soon the queen is not just viewed as a mere woman, but as less than human as well. When the king is no longer viewed as a class apart, atrocities like regicide become thinkable; people are persuaded that such acts even promote the public good. While these demotions sound extreme, Burke’s larger argument is that the “moral imagination” is a vital component of society, and when people become convinced that elements of their traditional worldview—like chivalry—are outmoded, it is difficult to predict what the downstream societal effects might be.

Here Burke argues that, whatever impression his correspondent Depont has received, the larger part of the English public does not support revolutionary sentiments. Those that do, like the Revolution Society, are insignificant. He claims that such groups create an exaggerated impression of their size and influence by publishing dramatic statements of their ideals (like Price’s sermon, which Burke has just finished critiquing) and thus amplifying one another’s views. However, Burke urges Depont not to suppose that the broader public’s apparent silence means that they assent to radical views. They are like the implacable cattle, who calmly go about their age-old business, while the grasshoppers make a harmless nuisance of themselves. Burke makes the point that there isn’t a notable revolutionary momentum in England, even if the Revolution Society’s contacts in Paris have given Depont that impression. However, at the same time, Burke really is concerned about the inroads of French revolutionary thought in England, or he would not be going to such lengths to publicly refute such views.

In this passage, Burke introduces his understanding of “prejudice” and its significance in his view of politics. Prejudice, at this time, didn’t have an automatic connotation of bigotry. Rather, Burke uses this term to mean the preconceptions that come before any kind of reason-based appraisal (“untaught feelings”). He sets up prejudice against the kind of rationalism that infused revolutionary thought, wanting to show how these different forms of belief have different practical implications. For Burke, long-held prejudices are justifiable because of their antiquity. They provide a stable basis for the continuation of civil society, as well as for reformation where needed. For the revolutionary, on the other hand, prejudices deserve to be overthrown because they are old and outdated. Society should be restructured without the fetters of prejudice, appealing to unbiased reason instead. Thus, prejudice provides a helpful window into the differences between Burke’s political outlook and the revolutionary outlook, as he portrays it.

Burke is arguing that it is unlikely that French revolutionary sentiments will make significant inroads into English society. Even if groups like the Revolution Society manage to stir up interest in French events, attempts to foment similar revolution are unlikely to generate momentum in England. Significantly, Burke makes this point, in part, by recalling events from English history—the comment on infallibility of popes likely refers to repeated papal attempts to impose Rome’s appointees to English bishoprics. He also makes a comparison that recurs elsewhere in Reflections, likening the views of France’s political “philosophers” to a dogmatic religious faith—here, a faith that makes the same demands on people’s consciences as the medieval Catholic Church (the “lamp-iron” might refer to public hangings in revolutionary Paris). His overall argument is that England does not take kindly to the incursions of foreign ideas into its way of life, because it is so firmly founded on its own history and traditions. He also reinforces his portrayal of the Revolution as a kind of blind dogmatism that tries to enforce its ideas by violence, in contrast to the English way that is confident in its roots and cannot be forced, nor does it seek to force others.

In this part of Reflections, Burke is discussing the complexity of government, and, in light of that complexity, the gravity with which anyone should approach an alteration of existing structures. However, the complexity is not just a matter of technical intricacy, but of accountability to others. Before Edmund Burke, other Enlightenment-era political theorists had worked with the concept of the social contract: a way of talking about the relationship between the state and the individual. The most notable of these was John Locke, whose Second Treatise of Government (1689) had envisioned the state as a contract between citizens who give up certain freedoms to the state (such as violence) in exchange for other freedoms. Here, however, Burke is not just interested in contracts as agreements regarding temporal goods, or even regarding the ordering of everyday society. He envisions society as a contract regarding more than “temporary and perishable” matters—rather, as a contract among all generations, past and future. This idea allows Burke to connect matters of practical governance to his cherished emphasis on the importance of history, nature, and tradition, as well as to caution his audience regarding the propriety of revolutions, which inevitably disrupt this ongoing spiritual “contract.”

As Burke examines how the French Revolution was brought about, he considers how the traditional structures of the Christian faith were systematically driven out of French society. At the time Burke wrote Reflections, the Declaration of the Rights of Man had recently proclaimed freedom of religious beliefs, as long as “their manifestation does not trouble the public order.” The National Assembly had also begun seizing church properties in order to deal with the country’s massive debt. However, Burke is most concerned here about the swaying of public opinion through an alliance between the monied class and certain “men of letters,” who have been fomenting distrust and even bigotry against the church by gaining control of “mediums of opinion.” One example of how this process had gotten underway earlier in the Enlightenment is d’Alembert’s and Diderot’s 35-volume Encyclopedia, which subordinated theology to philosophy. Burke fears that this cultural shift is becoming more fanatical, threatening the place that religion has traditionally occupied in binding society together. His concerns were not entirely misplaced, as later in the 1790s, the Christian calendar was replaced with a post-Revolutionary one, traditional festivals were replaced with Festivals of Liberty, Reason and the Supreme Being, and the French government briefly mandated the deistic Cult of the Supreme Being.

Burke continues his discussion of the way that radicals have attempted to win France over to a revolutionary mindset. First, the people have been worn down by the shocking nature of revolutionary activity—everything from the march on the palace of Versailles (which Burke himself had so dramatically portrayed earlier) to the confiscation of church lands has rattled people’s expectations about their government and their way of life. Once people’s “moral sentiments” were suitably shocked, the revolutionaries took advantage of this by tearing down the old monarchical government, hoping that people would now be more disposed to agree. Finally, they stoke deeper divisions within society by acting as if any objection to their more extreme measures puts someone on the side of the king, who has already been rejected as tyrannical. Burke calls this cynical process a “contemptible fraud,” as it is meant to serve those who are already in power, making people who might be inclined to protest feel bound to support them.

Burke reflects on the progress of the French Revolution, first by granting that there certainly were censurable “vices” that the French rightly sought to address. While Burke doesn’t quarrel with the necessity of reform, he tries to show that there is a big difference between addressing problems and tearing down existing structures and starting fresh. Was the existing monarchy so irredeemable, he asks, that it needed to be eliminated in favor of something that had never been tried before? He further argues that nobody in France was thinking this way at the beginning of 1789, and he suggests that as recently as a year before, most people in government were inclined to undertake reforms, not seek revolution. He portrays the revolution as a train of events that quickly got out of control, sweeping people along who might otherwise have been content to take a more incremental approach to fixing the government’s ills. In this way, Burke is able to portray his stance as a moderate position between outdated monarchy and radical revolution. This is in keeping with his inclination to favor reform as both open to change but also consistent with past tradition.

In this section, Burke has just finished discussing statistics in revolutionary Paris, such as high rates of unemployment and mendicancy (begging). He argues that the revolution has harmed France’s economy and standard of living rather than relieving the country’s financial woes. He uses these points to bolster his anti-revolutionary stance. After all, he argues, there is nothing inherently wrong with poverty, as long as it is joined to genuine liberty. But he implies that the supposed “liberty” secured by the Revolution is a counterfeit one. Its fruits of increased poverty and makeshift societal changes suggest that it was undertaken hastily and without measured consideration. The present conditions in France, in short, were a high price to pay for something that might turn out to hurt the people more. Burke shows his characteristic caution regarding the propriety of revolutions—in his view, they tend to damage too much that has been handed down for generations and might yet be worth preserving.

In this quote, Burke shows his understanding of the use and misuse of history. He doesn’t argue for a straightforward, wooden application of the lessons of the past. Rather, he argues that it must be studied and applied with great care. Misapplying history can backfire in the present, making present conditions worse than they were before. If it’s uncritically applied, history can become a “magazine”—a place for storing ammunition—to stoke present-day division, prejudice, and even violence. People can easily look into history and associate themselves, or their enemies, with figures and events that help strengthen their own self-conception, deepening polarization. So, Burke’s valorization of history is not an argument for a simple, moralistic reading of the past, or one that discourages change altogether. Instead, he recognizes that the complexities of both past and present must be accounted for and not carelessly mixed to serve rhetorical purposes.

Here, Burke builds on his argument regarding the use of history, providing a clear example. The St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre was an outbreak of mob violence by Catholics against Huguenots (French Protestants) in 1572. Burke argues that nobody in present-day Paris sides with the persecutors in that terrible event, and that the descendants of the perpetrators shouldn’t be punished for it, either. However, the event was recently reenacted in a stage play, with a very specific contemporary application in mind. Burke says that the portrayal of the Cardinal of Lorraine—an infamously scheming churchman suspected of complicity in the Massacre—was intended to serve the anti-clerical sentiments of modern Paris. The sight of the hated Cardinal would provoke people to turn against the present Archbishop of Paris, whose reputation, Burke says, is far less objectionable. This illustration shows how history can be used not to teach a general principle—that persecution and religiously-motivated violence are immoral, for example—but instead to manipulate people toward specific factional ends.

In this quote, Burke returns to his theme that government is a complex matter. He argues that the current revolutionary government of France is especially ill-suited to the task, because they lack the patience necessary to undertake sound, long-lasting reforms. He associates revolution primarily with the task of pulling things down and destroying existing structures—something, he argues, that a mere mob could do, since it doesn’t require any particular skill. From this perspective, easy to identify problems and violently rise up against them. It’s another skill altogether to figure out how to address weaknesses and failings in a non-destructive manner. Here Burke draws a sharp distinction between reform and revolution. The latter, in his view, can hardly be called real governance, and it requires little more than anger and motivation. Reform requires discernment, a respect for the past, and foresight as well. Thus, this quote sums up significant central themes in Burke’s thought. In his view, workable change requires genuine knowledge of the past, and revolutionary sentiments fail in this respect because they are grounded more on untested theory than on time-tested observations.