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Section 15
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Reflections on the Revolution in France, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Use and Abuse of History
Nature, Tradition, and Wisdom
Revolution and Reform
Theory vs. Practicality
Summary
Analysis
Burke turns to the subject of revenue. It’s an important subject because “the revenue of the state is the state […] all depends upon it, whether for support or for reformation.” It’s what allows for “public virtue.” Countries generally flourish when there’s a reciprocal proportion between “what is left to strengthen the efforts of individuals, and what is collected for the common efforts of the state.”
Burke addresses the subject of revenue as more than just money, but as the means for the government to do the things it must do. Both the health of people’s private means and the collection of tax revenues are indicators of a state’s health.
Themes
Burke reports that, within the past year, France’s national revenue has diminished by more than one-third of the whole. The Assembly has blamed this on such things as the public monopoly of salt, which they publicly denounced even as they continued to collect it. Pretty soon, those provinces most heavily burdened by the salt tax ceased paying it. It soon followed that the most submissive and orderly parts of France began bearing most of the tax burden, and the state’s insufficient authority could do nothing to remedy this; attempts became more and more despotic.
The example of the salt tax is another illustration of how a weakened government undermines itself. By denouncing the salt tax as despotic, the government gave license for the people to ignore it, too, and inequality has resulted.
Themes
Burke last examines France’s system of credit. Essentially, it has no credit. This is largely because “their fanatical confidence in the omnipotence of church plunder, has induced these philosophers to overlook all care of the public estate,” and they place an almost superstitious faith in the power of paper money (the assignats based on the confiscation). Only “the most desperate adventurers in philosophy and finance” would have destroyed settled revenues in the hope of rebuilding it with confiscated property, says Burke. There has never actually been a clear statement of the value of the confiscated estates compared with the regular income by revenue. Burke calls it neither “plain-dealing, nor […] ingenious fraud.” In the end, France’s condition is “the effect of preposterous politics, and […] short-sighted, narrow-minded wisdom.”
Finally, the disastrous state of France’s credit, too optimistically grounded on the plan to gain revenues from confiscated Church properties, is a prime example of the new government’s lack of seriousness. The state of things in France unsustainable on its face, no matter whether it has come about through intentional trickery or simple lack of wisdom.
Themes
