This is the last of my blogs on Edmund Burke (for the time being). I feel like it is a sad goodbye to a good and respected friend. By the time of the French Revolution, Burke (1729-1797) was close to the end of his public career and life. In this last years, he conducted a one-person crusade against the French Revolution and those in England who wished to emulate the excesses of the French. In particular, Burke wrote against the lack of respect for past human achievements, disregard of human rights, lack of respect for persons, violence, foolish self-seeking, and revolt against religion that too often animated French revolutionaries. In so doing, he finalized his views on politics in a way that has been profoundly useful and important in subsequent times, including our own.
French Revolution (1789-1799)
In August 1789, a “Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen” was adopted by the National Assembly of France. Historically the national assembly of France (the “Estate General”) was composed of representatives of all the citizenry of France, which were divided into three estates, the nobility, the clergy, and the remainder of the people. As a practical matter, average French-persons were massively underrepresented. [1] In 1789, the first Estate General since 1614, a gathering of all three of the Estates of France, was called by the French king, Louis XVI, to address a financial crisis into which France had been plunged by financial mismanagement, foreign adventures, domestic overspending, and support for the American Revolution. [2]
In June 1789, the Third Estate alone declared itself the “National Assembly” and events began taking a revolutionary turn. The ancient privileges of the crown, the nobility, and the clergy of France were now certain to be modified, or as matters turned out, eliminated altogether. In the end, the French Revolution was a massive, violent failure, ending in the dictatorship of Napoleon Bonaparte.
The French revolutionary experiment began optimistically. The king and nobility knew that there needed to be, would have to be, substantial modifications of their system of government for the nation to recover from the disaster into which mismanagement had led it. Many of the nobility, some of whom would later be executed during the Reign of Terror (1793-1795), agreed and supported needed change. Many of the more moderate adherents of the revolution desired to model the French Revolution after the American Revolution, which had established a stable constitutional state. Others desired to see a system of limited monarchy, similar to that in Great Britain. However, there were serious differences between both the British Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the American Revolution of 1776. These differences ultimately caused the French Revolution to take a tragic turn. [3]
The leadership of the British and American revolution, though impacted by the Enlightenment, were substantially unaffected by the anti-religious and radical sentiment that emboldened the French Revolution. In the case of Britain, the Glorious Revolution was intended to preserve and secure the rights of the people and Protestant character of the state. As to the American revolution, protection of religious freedom generally was one goal of the revolution. In both the cases, the propertied classes, nobility (in England), and business interests were represented and had influence over events. Finally, the moderate political views of British thinkers guided the Glorious and American Revolutions, whereas more radical ideas of Rousseau, Voltaire, and others guided the French Revolution.
Burke’s Response
A year or so after the French Revolution began, Burke published his “Reflections on the Revolution in France” [4]This was before the reign of Terror and the worst excesses of the revolution, which Burke foresaw and partially wrote his response to the way in which the French were managing their revolution to avoid. By the end of the century, Burke’s views were seen as both accurate and prophetic.
Failure to Keep Public Faith. In Burke’s view, the French Revolution resulted from the various “estates,” that is the people that made up all the citizens of France, failing to keep faith with one another in matters of importance. In so doing, the government of France reached a point of revolution:
The constituted parts of a state are obligated to hold their public faith with each other, and with all those who derive any serious interest under their engagements, as much as the whole state is bound to keep its faith with the separate communities: otherwise competence and power would soon be confounded, and no law would be left but the will of a prevailing power. [5]
In Burke’s view, the government, the nobility, the clergy, and the people owed reciprocal duties to one another. It was, for example, a breach of public trust for the nobility, clergy, and crown to saddle the Third Estate with a tax burden they could not meet and condemn the majority of the people to poverty. This was not just a violation of the social compact (though it was), it was also a violation of natural law and exposed France to revolution. In the end, all that was left was power, which in the case of the French fell into incompetent, corrupt, radical and violent hands. [6] This duty was a duty both of those whose mismanagement provoked the revolution and those who were conducting it.
A Fixed Rule of Change. According to Burke, in the case of France, there was no “fixed rule of change,” that is to say there was no way the Third Estate could effectively express their grievances and effect a peaceful change of government. By the time of the Glorious Revolution in England, the British people had endured the Cromwellian Revolution, the Restoration of the Stewart Dynasty, the substitution of James I for Charles II, and the Glorious Revolution itself. In the process, Parliament had both gained power and sustained social order. By 1688, no one wanted to return to the violence of prior periods, and so an orderly change in the state was accomplished. During the American Revolution, there was a strong desire to maintain the historic rights of British citizens for the American people. There was no such order available in the French Revolution. The result was that the Third Estate grabbed all power, and all the institutions of society were subjected to radical, violent, and in the end, failed change.
A Sense of Inheritance. In what I take to be one of the most important and pertinent arguments of Reflections on the Revolution in France, Burke argues that the British and American revolutions could be distinguished from that in France by the absence of a sense of continuity and inheritance:
The Revolution (of 1688) was made to preserve our ancient indisputable laws and liberties, and that ancient constitution of government which is our only security for law and liberty. If you are desirous of knowing the spirit of our constitution, and the policy that predominated in that great period which secured it to this hour, pray look in our histories, in our records, in our acts of Parliament and journals of Parliament…. We wished at the period of the Revolution, and do now wish, to derive all we possess as an inheritance from our forefathers. [7]
This notion that the institutions of a stable government that protects the rights and property of its citizens are “an inheritance” is an important aspect of Burke’s organic view of government. He believed that a wise constitutional order works after the “order of nature,” like a parent bequeathing an inheritance to a child. Thus, a sound constitutional order is an inheritance from those who established that order. This inheritance is to be received, built upon and improved by subsequent generations. Burke’s notion of an “order of nature” is consonant with the view that human history is a kind of evolving process, in which each generation receives the benefits of civilization and passes that inheritance on in either better or worse, but certainly different, condition that it was received. [8]
Failure of the French to Build on Historical Foundations. In his emphasis on “inheritance” Burke reveals his sense of stewardship of the past, and the notion that the past, both good and bad, limits and directs the activities of a wise statesperson. In the case of France, Burke was well aware that the French Constitution and social order was in disorder. Nevertheless, there was an order, and that order was capable of being peacefully altered to protect the interests of the people of France. In order to do this, Burke felt it would have been wise to build on the existing foundations rather than tear apart the social order in its entirety. In failing to do this, the National Assembly had been guilty of great foolishness and unleashed a great suffering on the French people. [9] History has generally judged Burke correct in his views. [10]
Reliance on “Metaphysical Speculation” as Opposed to Practical Experience. Underlying Burke’s critique of the French Revolution is his pragmatism and instinctive distrust of what he termed “metaphysical speculations,” which in the case of the French Revolution involved a dramatic shift in society led by people with only an abstract idea of where they were leading the state based upon the speculation of social theorists, like Rousseau with little or no experience in government and politics. Burke spends a great deal of time in Reflections on the Revolution in France outlining the lack of experience, wisdom, and attainments in those who made up the French National Assembly of Revolutionary France. In his view, the clergy and nobility chosen were not of the best leadership, and the assembly was too much led by lawyers with little or no magisterial experience. [11]
In Burke’s view, legislative bodies should be made up of persons of an established position in life, attainments, property, well-educated and with fixed experience and habits that would enable them to serve the state and its citizens well. This is an aspect of Burke’s thought that could be important to our own day. We do have age requirements for public office in most areas, but qualifications are a different matter. As a matter of choice, voters need to ponder the life experience and qualifications that they feel public servants at every level should have. I would only state that political experience may not be the only relevant kind of experience to be considered as necessary.
Opposition to Religion and Historic Morals. Finally, Burke saw the anti-religious and sometimes immoral foundation of the radical French Revolution as symptomatic of its rejection of a kind of humility that sees human institutions as subject to a higher power, which created and sustains the universe, and therefore, at least indirectly human institutions of all kinds. This humility also encourages leaders to see themselves as stewards of the past and the public trust. Burke saw that social institutions must themselves rest upon the foundation of a sound morality, for everything cannot be made subject to law.
In one of his most impassioned passages, Burke exclaims to the reader:
There is no qualification for government but virtue and wisdom, actual or presumptive. Wherever they are actually found, they have, in whatever state, condition, trade, the passport of Heaven to human place and honor. Woe to the country which would madly and impiously reject the service of the talents, virtues, civil, military, or religious, that are given to grace and to serve it; it would condemn to obscurity everything formed to diffuse the luxury and glory around a state. Woe to the country too, that, passing into the opposite extreme, considers a low education, a mean, contracted view of things, a sordid mercenary occupation as preferable title to command. [12]
We live in a time in which an Enlightenment kind of reasoning is all too common, and rejecting religious faith and morals is a commonplace. Burke believes, and warns us against rejecting the role of religious faith in society and politics. Unlike Burke’s day in England, this warning is against the a priori rejection of any religious group. It is also a call to religious groups to think long and carefully about the service they may make by restraining their energies to a focus on the spiritual and moral condition of society. Woe to the society that rejects the input of religious groups on matters of public importance. Woe also to a religious group that does not undertake its mission in public life without a spirit of service and self-sacrifice.
Conclusion
At this point, we must leave Burke for the time being. I can only urge readers to consider reading the primary source for themselves. His thought is often so complex, and so embedded in a particular historical reality that it is difficult to follow, much less synthesize for a casual reader. His morally-informed pragmatism, his respect for history and for tradition, his belief in natural law embedded in common law, and his distrust of abstract idealism in politics seem to me to be the basic foundations of his thought to be remembered and internalized by interested readers.
Copyright, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved 2021
[1] Historically, franc was made up of three estates, each of which were represented within the Estates‐General. These three orders were the nobility, the clergy, and all other French citizens, known as the “Third Estate.” Ultimately, the Third Estate became the ultimate legislative body, and responsible for the excesses of the revolution.
[2] Under the existing French taxation system, the clergy and the nobility did not pay their fair share of taxes, resulting in a huge burden of taxation falling on the Third Estate, which lacked the economic resources to support the spending of the government of Louis XVI. The luxurious lifestyle of the Bourbon kings, their many wars with England, and their support of the American Revolution, all combined to bankrupt the state.
[3] This is not the place for me to give a full history of the French Revolution or the cultural differences between the Glorious Revolution of 16888 and the American Revolution of 1776. However, in my mind, these differences need to be studied and internalized by contemporary Americans. The current brand of revolutionary ideology being promoted publicly bears an unfortunate resemblance to the French Revolution. Those who wish our nation to adapt to its current issues, need to study the French Revolution and the events leading up to it.
[4] The quotations from this work and from other works of Burke upon which this blog is based are found in Edmund Burke: Selected Writings and Speeches Peter J. Stanis, ed. (Washington, DC: Regency Publications, 1963). Unless otherwise noted, all quotations are from this edition of Burke’s thought.
[5] Id, at 522.
[6] This might serve as a warning to our leaders. There is no doubt but that the spending habits of the US government have resulted in an enormous debt burden that constitutes a failure of the government to keep faith with its people.
[7] Id, at 527. I have added the parenthetical reminder of the date for readers unfamiliar with Burke.
[8] I cannot give this aspect of Burke’s thought all the consideration it deserves, but will return to it later in these blogs as we begin to examine the impact of modern physics and the view of reality that has emerged in what has become known as “process philosophy” on the issue of our current difficulties. Post-modern physics is sympathetic to a vision of reality as an evolving process, with each future state incorporating the past in a process of continuity and change. This view of reality was given prominence by Alfred North Whitehead in his great work, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (New York, Free Press, 1929). At this point, it is enough to introduce the notion that the citizens of a state inherit a set of existing conditions as an “inheritance,” representing something like an “initial state” and will pass on this “inheritance” with such modifications as they may wisely or foolishly make. The views of Whitehead and his followers are sometimes referred to as a kind of “constructive post-modernism,” that can in a positive way incorporate post-modern thinking. Many weeks from now, we will look at Whitehead as a political thinker.
[9] Id, at 530.
[10] Burke’s reputation as a stateman and thinker were very much enhanced by the fact that as early as 1789 he was able to predict the violent and destructive of the French Revolution and its fundamental causes.
[11] See, Burke, at 554ff.
[12] Id, at 540.