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IN CONTEXT

IDEOLOGY

Conservativism

FOCUS

Political tradition

BEFORE

1688 English landowners force the abdication of James II in the Glorious Revolution.

1748 Montesquieu asserts that liberty is maintained in England by a balance of power in different parts of society.

AFTER

1790–91 Paine’s Rights of Man and Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman counter Burke’s work.

1867–94 Marx’s Capital states that the overthrow of the status quo is inevitable.

1962 Michael Oakeshott upholds the importance of tradition in public institutions.

In 1790, British statesman and political theorist Edmund Burke wrote one of the first and most cogent criticisms of the revolution in France, which had begun the previous year. His pamphlet, entitled “Reflections on the French Revolution,” suggested that the passions of individuals should not be allowed to dictate political judgments.

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When the revolution began, Burke had been surprised by it, but not overtly critical. He was shocked by the ferocity of the insurgents, but admired their revolutionary spirit—much as he had admired the American revolutionaries in their quarrel with the English crown. By the time Burke was writing his pamphlet, the revolution had gathered momentum. Food was scarce, and rumors abounded that the king and aristocrats were set to overthrow the Third Estate (the rebellious people). Peasants rose up against their ruling lords, who—in fear for their lives—granted them their freedom through the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. This affirmed that all people had “natural rights” to liberty, property, and security, and to resist oppression.

  However, the king refused to sanction the Declaration, and on October 5, 1789, crowds of Parisians marched to Versailles to join the peasants in forcing the king and his family back to Paris. For Burke, this was a step too far, and it provoked him to write his critical pamphlet—which has been seen ever since as the classic rebuttal to would-be revolutionaries.

Government as organism

Burke was a Whig, a member of a British political party that favored the gradual progress of society—as opposed to the Tory party, which strove to maintain the status quo. Burke championed emancipation for Catholics in Ireland and for India from the corrupt East India Company. But, unlike other Whigs, he believed the continuity of government was sacrosanct. In Reflections, he argues that government is like a living thing, with a past and a future. We cannot kill it and start anew, as the French revolutionaries aimed to do.

  Burke sees government as a complex organism that grows over time into the subtle, living form that it is today. The nuances of its political being—from the behavior of monarchs to the inherited aristocratic codes of behavior—have developed over generations in such an elaborate way that nobody can understand how it all works. The habit of government is so deep-rooted among the ruling class, he says, that they barely have to think about it. Anyone believing they can use their powers of reason to destroy society and build a better one from scratch—such as Enlightenment thinker Jean-Jacques Rousseau—is foolish and arrogant.

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John Bull is tempted by the devil, who hangs from the Tree of Liberty, symbolizing the fear of French revolutionary zeal spreading to England at the time of Burke’s writings.

Abstract rights

Burke is particularly damning of the Enlightenment concept of natural rights. They may be all very well in theory, he says, but that’s where the problem lies: “their abstract perfection is their practical defect.” Also, for Burke, a theoretical right to a good or service is of no use whatsoever if there is no means to procure it. There is no end to what people may reasonably claim as rights. In reality, rights are simply what people want, and it is the government’s task to mediate between the wants of people. Some wants can even include restraint on the wants of others.

  It is a fundamental rule of any civil society, Burke says, “that no man should be judge in his own cause.” To live in a free and just society, a man must give up his right to determine many things he deems essential. In claiming that “the passions of individuals should be subjected,” Burke means that society must control the unruly will of the individual for the good of the rest. If everyone is allowed to behave as he wishes, expressing every passion and whim, the result is chaos. Indeed, not just individuals but the masses as a whole must be so constrained, “by a power out of themselves.”

  This refereeing role requires “a deep knowledge of human nature and human necessities,” and is so complex that theoretical rights are a distraction.

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Burke saw the discussion of abstract rights as a distraction from the main task of government—to mediate between the wants and needs of those they govern.

Habit and prejudice

Burke was skeptical of individual rights, arguing instead for tradition and habit. He viewed government as an inheritance to be carried forward safely into the future, and made a distinction between England’s Glorious Revolution of 1688 and France’s ongoing turmoil. The English revolution, which replaced the Catholic-leaning King James II with the Protestant William and Mary, was about preserving the status quo against a wayward monarch, not fabricating a new government, which would fill Burke with “disgust and horror.”

"The social contract… is between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born."

Edmund Burke

Burke defended an unthinking emotional response to respect the king and parliament as “the general bank and capital of nations.” He saw this as far superior to the vagaries of individual reason, but regarded prejudice as an age-old wisdom that could produce a fast, automatic response in emergencies that left the rational man hesitating.

  The consequences of ignoring these traditions may be dire, Burke warned. New men entering the political fray would not be able to run an existing government, let alone a new one. Struggles between factions trying to step into the power vacuum would inevitably lead to bloodshed and terror—and a chaos so consuming that the military would have to take over.

The Burke revolution

Burke’s prediction of both the Terror in the French Revolution, which occurred in 1793 and 1794, and the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1799, earned him a reputation as something of a seer. His arguments appealed to those on the right, but were also a surprise to those on the left. Thomas Jefferson, then living in France as a US diplomat, wrote, “The Revolution in France does not astonish me as much as the revolution in Mr Burke.” In England, Thomas Paine immediately wrote The Rights of Man—published in 1791—to challenge Burke’s argument against natural rights.

The power of property

Burke believed that society’s stability was underpinned by inherited property—the massive inherited properties of the landowning aristocracy. Only such rich landowners had the power, self-interest, and inherited political skill, Burke asserted, to prevent the monarchy overreaching itself. The great size of their landholdings also acted as a natural protection for the lesser properties around them. In any case, he argued, the redistribution from the few to the many could only ever result in “inconceivably small” gains.

"The great feudal lords created an incomparably larger proletariat by the forcible driving of the peasantry from the land."

Karl Marx

Although Napoleon was eventually defeated, the revolutions that rolled on through Europe long after Burke’s death gave his ideas a special place in the hearts of those frightened by the uprisings. Burke’s plea for the continuity of government and society seemed to some to be a beacon of sanity in a mad world. However, for Karl Marx—who was particularly critical of Burke’s ideas on property—and many others, Burke’s defense of inequality was unacceptable. Burke argued persuasively against the trashing of tradition, but according to his critics, this leads ultimately to the defense of societies in which the majority are kept in a life of servitude, with no prospect of betterment and no say in their future. Burke’s defense of prejudice, intended as a call for sympathy for people’s natural inclinations, can end up as an argument for blind bigotry. His assertion that the passions of individuals should be subjected is potentially a justification for censorship, the persecution of dissenters, and a police state.

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Napoleon Bonaparte swept to power in 1799, fulfilling Edmund Burke’s 1790 prediction that a military dictatorship would follow the revolutionary overthrow of the monarchy in France.

EDMUND BURKE

Born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1729, Burke was raised as a Protestant, while his sister, Juliana, was raised a Catholic. He initially trained as a lawyer, but soon gave up law to become a writer. In 1756, he published A Vindication of Natural Society, a satire of Tory leader Lord Bolingbroke’s views on religion. Soon after, he became private secretary to Lord Rockingham, the Whig prime minister.

  In 1774, Burke became a Member of Parliament, later losing his seat due to the unpopularity of his views on the emancipation of Catholics. His fight for the abolition of capital punishment earned him a reputation as a progressive. However, his criticism of the French Revolution caused a split with the radical wing of his Whig party, and today he is remembered more for his conservative philosophy than his liberal views.

Key works

1756 A Vindication of Natural Society

1770 Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents

1790 Reflections on the Revolution in France

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