Reflections on the Revolution in France: Section 9 Summary & Analysis

Burke says it is only natural that his feelings are so different from those of Dr. Price. Humans are made “to be affected at such spectacles […] in events like these our passions instruct our reason.” Burke says that poets, who have “not yet graduated in the school of the rights of men,” would not dare to write of a spectacle like the Revolution as other than a tragedy; a stage actor would reject such, also. If such a thing were performed onstage, any theater-goer would intuitively see that the Revolution “would justify every […] crime,” and that “criminal means once tolerated are soon preferred.” When “the rights of men” triumph, it’s not long before people lose the ability to discern right from wrong.

Burke says that, if it could have been demonstrated to him that the king and queen of France were indeed “cruel tyrants,” he would think their present captivity fair, since “the punishment of real tyrants is a noble […] act” to be gravely carried out. But to “degrade and insult a man as the worst of criminals,” and then make a pretense of retaining him as king, is inconsistent and foolish.

Burke supposes that “not one in a hundred” English people shares the views of the Revolution Society. The English, he says, “know that we have made no discoveries […] in morality […] nor in the ideas of liberty, which were understood long before we were born,” and will remain after they die. In England, kings, priests, and the nobility are still reverenced, “because […] it is natural.”

Burke goes on to tell Depont, “I am bold enough to confess, that we are generally men of untaught feelings […] we cherish [our prejudices] to a very considerable degree,” especially those prejudices that have lasted for a long time. The English avoid entrusting each person to “his own private stock of reason,” because it is presumably quite small; it’s better to “avail themselves of the general bank and capital of nations, and of ages.”

Prejudice provides a sort of coat for “naked reason,” “[gives] action to that reason, and an affection which will give it permanence.” It also serves well in an “emergency,” allowing access to time-tested wisdom in moments requiring clear judgment. “Prejudice renders a man’s virtue his habit,” allowing “duty [to become] a part of his nature.”

Burke explains that this is a point of difference between most of the English and the “whole clan of the enlightened.” The latter have far greater confidence in their own wisdom than in that of others; they will tear down old things just because they’re old, and they don’t worry about the durability of the hastily constructed new. Why would someone whose confidence rests in “discovery” worry much about the past, or about how long his own ideas will last? Convenience and opinion rule the day with such people, argues Burke.

Burke has heard that a “philosophic” faction has received credit for recent events in France. In England, such groups have frequently been composed of “atheists and infidels” and have done little more in their day than create “noise”; their works are no longer read or well regarded, and they have never gained much traction among the people, who embody “a sort of native plainness and directness of understanding.”

English people, Burke goes on, are convinced “that religion is the basis of civil society.” While they are not blinded to the faults and failings that may corrupt religion, they would not call upon atheism to address those. Humanity is instinctively religious. If it became necessary to throw off England’s accustomed religion, they would seek to put another in its place; but it is England’s habit to “cleave closely to [establishments],” rather than disagreeing with them.