Reflections on the Revolution in France

"Prior to The Reflections , Burke was thought of as a friend of liberty. He had been very sympathetic to the American cause and Wollstonecraft defended him, and others, in a review. Also, this would not have been known to her or to anyone else, but Burke wrote an unpublished critique of the laws pertaining to Ireland. They saw him as one of them. When the Reflections came out and he becomes the champion of private property, they think of him as a turncoat. To begin with, a young man had written to Burke to invite him to congratulate the French on their newly acquired liberty, which Burke did not do. He knew the family of the young man, they had come and stayed with him. In 1788, a society had been formed for the commemoration of the Glorious Revolution. In 1789, Richard Price, who was a dissenting minister, spoke to this society, “On the Love of our Country” , in which he says—and I’m paraphrasing—’what a time to be alive, the Glorious Revolution, the American Revolution, now the French Revolution, this is clearly the forward march of Providence.’ Price is deeply anti-Papist and for him the French Revolution is nothing short of a victory against the Antichrist. “She thought of herself as a philosopher and a moralist and had she lived longer would have written on all manners of subjects well beyond vindicating the rights of women” Burke reacts to what he thinks is a very dangerous moment, when authors like Price are giving a false account of the Glorious Revolution and linking it to the French one. There is quite a lot of sympathy in this country for what is going on in the early moments of the French Revolution. To put a lid on that, Burke writes The Reflections. The beginning of the Reflections is a critique of Price’s account of the Settlement of 1689, arguing that it was a ‘reason of state’ moment when there was a slight deviation in the succession to save the constitution, and that one couldn’t argue from deviations to a rule. In fact, it was the opposite and 1689 was in no way a statement about popular sovereignty and so forth. He moves to a critique of France’s National Assembly, its composition, the mediocrity of its members, their inexperience, and so forth. Much of what he says takes the form of a ‘slippery slope’ argument, most notably in relation to the appropriation of Church lands: that once you violate private property, and the independence of its central institution, the whole will unravel, you begin to undermine society. What is the purpose of society? To secure life, liberty, and property. Burke sees what is taking place in France as something that will be unstoppable and that only a Napoleon -like figure will be able to stop. For him, it’s the beginning of the end of civilization. Effectively what’s being unraveled is something that very few people understand, that holds society together, that’s both very strong and very, very fragile. The fact that The Reflections criticized Price in this way meant that the Dissenting community had a great interest in destroying The Reflections . Joseph Johnson, a friend and publisher of Wollstonecraft, who gave her work as she needed to work, encouraged her to write a reply, which she duly did. She lost heart halfway through, but he encouraged her and was very supportive and she finished it. The Vindication of the Rights of Men is a very strongly worded attack. It’s an ad hominem attack in many places."

"And now I come to the absolute central one for anybody interested in politics—Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the French Revolution . There of course you get the conservative case at its most formidable—against change, in favour of tradition, in favour of hierarchy. He could conceive that you could improve, which is not of course what revolutions do because the very word revolution means more than just “improve”. You should never change unless absolutely necessary: no unnecessary change. But of course, although he was an English Whig, he was an Irishman: his family had been Catholic, but he became a Protestant because he wanted to get on in English politics. He was an outsider, he was not a grandee, but he did flatter the English aristocracy in a way, by giving them a cleaner bill of health than they probably deserved. He did think it was an essential, that the English aristocracy was an essential part of our constitutional arrangements. He would be appalled to see it all got rid of in the way it has been totally got rid of in recent years. But he summarises, in a marvelous piece of writing, the case for tradition to a greater degree than any other writer I can imagine, and that’s an absolutely pure pleasure book to read: the language is absolutely glowing with eloquence and passion, and marvelous stuff. He’d certainly been to France because everybody had been to France, but he never worked in France or anything. He was a leading Whig in England during the French Revolution. He certainly didn’t pretend he had a deep knowledge of French Politics, but I suppose what he was doing was saying at all costs we must stop this from happening in England. A lot of English people, English politicians like Charles James Fox, with whom he had a great battle, I mean they were both Whigs but their personalities were very different, cheered the French Revolution. Fox of course was in favour of the French Revolution, and supported Napoleon. Today it’s unbelievable really, to think that during the Napoleonic Wars prominent British politicians would be supporting the French cause. Very strange. But in any case anybody who reads Burke’s Reflections is in for a literary treat: it really is a historical work of genius so it’s not hard work: it’s a marvelous read. Yes, he was at the peak of his powers and political life in 1790 and was absolutely contemporaneous with the Revolution, but he died in 1797. Well yes, Burke was obviously very much doing that, and Tocqueville was very much writing about the American Revolution with an eye on the French Revolution. I mean obviously anybody writing about politics more or less since the French Revolution has had to come to grips with it, and think about its consequences. Yes, you could argue that it led to Napoleon, it led to military dictatorship. There are many reasons to distrust democracy, if you’ve studied the French Revolution. The consequences for France and for the world were a quarter of a century of terrible wars, and of course a military dictatorship in France: so it had almost the opposite effect. In the short term, at any rate, it didn’t serve democracy. But just to throw in one book as a bonne bouche and it’s just such a pleasure, and I didn’t read it until I was quite old and I regret it…"