FURTHER REFLECTIONS ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE EDMUND BURKE This book is published by Liberty Fund, Inc., a foundation estab- lished to encourage study of the ideal of a society of free and respon- sible individuals. The cuneiform inscription that serves as our logo and as the design motif for our endpapers is the earliest-known written appearance of the word "freedom" (amagO, or "liberty." It is taken from a clay doc- ument wrxtten about ::3oo BC in the Sumerian city-state of Lagash. Foreword and other editorial additions © I99z by Liberty Fund, Inc. All rights reserved. All inquiries should be addressed to Liberty Fund, Inc., 8335Allison Pomte Trail, Suite 3o0, Indianapolis, Indiana 4625o-I687. This book was manufactured in the United States of America. Frontispiece photo courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London. Portrmt from the studio of Joshua Reynolds. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Burke, Edmund, I729-I797. Further reflections on the revolution in France/Edmund Burke ; edited by Daniel E. Ritchie. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBNo-86597-o98-x (hardcover).--ISBN 0-86597-099-8 (pbk.) i. Burke, Edmund, i7z9-x797--Correspondence, z. France-- History--Revolution, _789-z799--Foreign public opinion, British. 3. Public opinion--Great Britain--History--zSth century. 4- Burke, Edmund, _7z9-I797. Reflections on the Revolution in France. I. lhtchie, Daniel E. II. Tide. DCISo.B8 I992 944.o4--dczo 91-33z65 oI oo 99 98 97 C 6 5 4 3 2 99 98 97 96 95 P 6 5 4 3 z CONTENTS FOREWORD vii EDITOR'S NOTE xxi LIST OF SHOR'I TITLES xxiii LETTER YO CHARLES-JEAN-FRANCOIS DEPONT ¢November I789) 3 2. LETTER TO PHILIP FRANCIS (February' 179o) 19 3- A LETTER TO A MEMBER OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBI.Y (Ma) 1791) 27 4" AN APPEAL FROM THE NEW TO THE OLD WHIGS (August 1791) 73 .5. THOUGHTS ON FRENCH AFFAIRS (December 179i) 2o3 6. LETTER qO WILLIAM ELLIOT (Ma_ *795) 257 7- A LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD _February ,796) 277 INDEX 327 FOREWORD In the two hundred _ears since Edmund Burke produced his writings on the French Revolution. the questum of hou to at|nine hbertv within a good socletx has remamed a pressing one. Simon Schama's masterful chronicle of the French Revohltum, C_tzzen_, argues that the Re_ olution attempted to create two entltmS, "a po- tent state and.., a communit_ of free cmzens," whose interests were irreconcilable It was impossible, Schama states, to serx e one without damaging the other. _ Burke's alternauve to revolutionar_ freedom and the revolu- tumarv state ma_ be found throughout this volume, especlalh m his description of what libert_ IS "'Practical hbertv," as Burke calls it in the first work prlnted here, difters 111almost ever_ respect from the revoluuonarx libert_ of the Fren(h on both the m&vldual and cor- porate levels. The mdlvMual that Burke describes is the "gen- tleman," a member of a "natural anstoc rac_." This gentlelnan is educated to respect the ancmnts, for the,_ anu(lpate the errors of the moderns, and to revel e God His upbnngmg re(hides a respe( t for parents, for we "begin our pubhc atfectlons in om famflws,'" as Burke sa_ s in Retie(twn_ (m the Revolution m Frame.-' The gentleman enjoys his llberues in and through his soCial, economw, rehglous, and pohtical msntutions They mediate his hbemes through his obhganons to them Those obhgat|ons are not at war with the En- ghshman's liberties, rather, thex prox Me the means for him Io de- velop ful]_ into the virtuous, free human being that God intended (p. i6i) Aware of the hostilit_ of the revolutionaries to the Meal ot the gent]eman, Burke writes "The great ohlect of your tyrants is to destrov the gentlemen of France. ""(P- 54) Bv contrast, the indivMual stated for rew)lutumar_ liberty is the "citizen." To quote S(hama on the cultural construcuon of the French citizen: "'In this new world [of the French citizen,] heart ' Simon Schama, Cmzem A Chromcle o/the FrenchRevolutwn (New Yo_k Knopf, 1989), p 15 " Edmund Burke, Reflectzon_on the RevoluUon tn Fran(e, ed Conor Crmse O'Bnen (Harmondsworth' Penguin, i968), p 315 Subsequent references to this u,ork will be gaven as Reflectwns. [VIII [viii] FOREWORD was to be preferred to head; emonon to reason; nature to cul- ture .... To possess un coeur semzble (a feeling heart) was the pre- condinon for morahty.'3 Rousseau, the chmf educator of the revo- lutionary generation of French ciuzens, taught that liberty was to be enjoyed after the individual had removed his existing social, econom- ic, religious, and political obligations. Praeucal libert_ differs from revolutionary liberty in its corpo- rate construcuon also. This difference is epitomized by the distinc- tion between Burke's "Constitution" and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man. Burke's critics, such as Thomas Paine, jeered that Britain lacked a constitution altogether, for there was no single pmce of paper w_th that utle. Burke's defense of the Constitution, especially m An Appeal[tom the New to the Old Whzg5 and A Letter to a Noble Lord, shows the slmple-mindedness of Paine's criticism. Paper declarations and manifestoes of "umversal" rights for abstract "'man" do nothing to further liberty, argued Burke. Burke's words on the American crisis in _775 are apropos. The Americans, he said, are not only devoted to hberty, but to hberty according to Enghsh ideas, and on Enghsh principles Abstract liberty, hke other mere abstractions, is not to be found Liberty inheres m some sensible object, and every nation has formed to ltselt some favourite point, which b_ way of eminence becomes the criterion of their happi- ness.4 By the "'sensible objects" of liberty, Burke means the actual prac- tices of the assembhes, courts, churches, and commercial insntu- tions of an actual people. The hberty pursued by Burke and the other Rockingham Whigs, he says in A Letter to a Noble Lord, "was a Liberty inseparable from order, from vlrtue, from morals, and from rehgion.." (p. 287). Burke consistently denied the posslbihty of discussing liberty in abstract terms and denied that liberty and constitutional law could ever truh' be separate A fundamentally different approach to reahty underlies the contrast between the practical liberty enjoyed by the gentleman under the Brmsh Constitution and the revolutionary liberty of the Schama, p. i49. 4 Edmund Burke, Speechon Concdzatwn,m The WorksoftheRtght Honourable Edmund Burke, 9 vols. (London' Henr_ G Bohn, t854--62), 1.464. Subse- quent references to this collecuon willbe given as Works, Bohn. [ix] FOREWORD French citizen. To Burke, eve R" principle such as liberty must be medzated by actual practices. To put it another way, a spiritual truth becomes real only insofar as it becomes flesh. By contrast, the revo- lutionary finds that the limxtations of the flesh enchain the spirit, and he therefore attempts to strip away appearances-----conventions, habits, prejudices, customs, and tradiuons--in order to recover the essennal reahtv beneath them, asJeffrey Hart has explamed.-_ The spirit of revolutionary liberty is disembodied, and pervades an m- ternanonal atmosphere, inspmng universal movements now in one place, now in another, requiring universal declarations of the rights of man now m one ume, now in another Bodies, whether they are legislatures, churches, famihes, or individual persons, are merely accidental. Indeed, the_ have always been, throughout history, the limiting factor in the revolutionarv's achievement of his goals. The revoluuonary envisions an immediate hbertv with no social insmu- tions outside the self to limit his freedoms. Burke never beheved that the achievement of liberty, in histori- cal nme, could enable men somehow to transcend their human nature. The sort of hbertv he envisioned enables men to realize their nature to the imperfect degree that It is possible on earth, but not to overcome their natural hmltations. The paradoxical truth _s that those fleshly hmltanons, especially as they are mediated by the artificial msututions of society, are the very means by which men achieve such hbertv as they can. "'Art _sman's nature," writes Burke in An Appeal In contrast to the senumental French cltizen, who saw art as opposed to nature, Burke writes The state of c_vllsociety., is a state of nature, and much more truly so than a savage and incoherent mode of life For man isby nature reasonable; and he is never perfectly m his natural state, but when he is placed where reason may be best culuvated, and most predominates Art is man's nature We are as much, at least, m a state of nature m formed manhood, as m immature and help- less infancy [p. 168] Burke had argued against the revoluuonary notion of a "natural society"----a society constructed with reference to an zmmedmte "na- ture" and without reference to the actual practices of govern- _Jeffrev Hart, Acts ofRecove_ (Hanover, N H • Umverslty Press of New England, i989), pp 228-232 [x] FOREWORD ment--ever since his first published work, the satirical Vindzcatzon of Natural Soczety (i 756). The belief that our liberties must be mediated to be enjoyed has consequences for both the individual and the corporate construc- tion of freedom. In the earliest work printed here, the letter to Depont, Burke lays out the conditions fbrjudging when a nation has achieved a "real practzcal liberty, with a government powerful to protect, [and] impotent to evade it..." (p. __; Burke's emphasis). He does not believe these condmons preclude a strong govern- ment, as Schama beheves the_ did In France. On the contrary, prac- tical liberty requires strong government.