Select Works of Edmund Burke: Reflections on the Revolution in France. Edmund Burke

for the colony of New York.

      1773 Visits France.

      1774 Elected Member of Parliament for city of Bristol, delivers classic speech on the independence of a representative.

      Delivers Speech on American Taxation, criticizing British policy of taxing the colonies.

      1775 Delivers Speech on Conciliation with the Colonies.

      1780 Because of opposition, withdraws from election at Bristol. Is elected M.P. from borough of Malton through Rockingham’s influence.

      Speech on the Economical Reform advocates Whig policy of reducing the king’s influence on Parliament.

      1782 Rockingham again appointed Prime Minister to end the American War.

      Burke becomes Paymaster of the Forces.

      Rockingham dies in office.

      1783 Rockingham Whigs under Charles James Fox form a government in coalition with Lord North.

      Burke, again Paymaster, delivers Speech on Fox’s East India Bill, attacking East India Company’s government of India.

      Coalition falls from power and is replaced by William Pitt the Younger’s Tory ministry, leaving the Whigs out of power for rest of Burke’s life.

      1786 Burke moves the impeachment of Warren Hastings, the Company’s Governor-General of Bengal.

      1788 Trial of Hastings begins, led by Burke.

      1789 French Revolution begins.

      1790 In November, publishes Reflections on the Revolution in France.

      1791 Breaks with Fox, leader of the former Rockingham Whigs, over the French Revolution.

      A Letter to a Member of the National Assembly [of France], An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs, and Thoughts on French Affairs.

      1793 War breaks out between Great Britain and France.

      Burke criticizes failure to prosecute the war vigorously in Observations on the Conduct of the Ministry and Remarks on the Policy of the Allies.

      1794 Prosecution of Hastings ends; Burke retires from Parliament.

      Burke’s son dies.

      1795 Hastings is acquitted.

       Thoughts and Details on Scarcity.

      1796 Burke defends his public life in A Letter to a Noble Lord.

      1796–97 Letters on a Regicide Peace protest British willingness to make peace with Revolutionary France.

      1797 Burke dies, July 9.

       SELECT WORKS OF EDMUND BURKEVOLUME 2

       REFLECTIONS ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE

INTRODUCTION

       BY E. J. PAYNE

      The famous letter or pamphlet contained in this volume represents the workings of an extraordinary mind at an extraordinary crisis: and can therefore be compared with few things that have ever been spoken or written. Composed in a literary age, it scarcely belongs to literature; yet it is one of the greatest of literary masterpieces. It embodies nothing of history save fragments which have mostly lost their interest, yet no book in the world has more historical significance. It scorns and defies philosophy, but it discloses a compact and unique system of its own. It tramples on logic, yet carries home to the most logical reader a conviction that its ill-reasoning is substantially correct. No one would think of agreeing with it in the mass, yet there are parts to which every candid mind will assent. Its many true and wise sayings are mixed up with extravagant and barefaced sophistry: its argument, with every semblance of legal exactness, is disturbed by hasty gusts of anger, and broken by chasms which yawn in the face of the least observant reader. It is an intellectual puzzle, not too abstruse for solution: and hence few books are better adapted to stimulate the attention and judgment, and to generate the invaluable habit of mental vigilance. To discover its defects is easy enough. No book in the world yields itself an easier prey to hostile criticism: there are thousands of school-boys, “with liberal notions under their caps,” to whom the greatest intellect of our nation since Milton,¹ represented by the best known parts of the present work, might well seem little better than a fool. After a time, this impression disappears; eloquence and deep conviction have done their work, and the wisdom of a few pages, mostly dealing in generalities, is constructively extended to the whole. But the reader now vacillates again: and this perpetual alternation of judgment on the part of a reader not thoroughly in earnest constitutes a main part of that fascination which Burke universally exercises. It is like the[vi] fascination of jugglery: now you believe your eyes, now you distrust them: the brilliancy of the spectacle first dazzles, and then satisfies: and you care little for what lies behind. This is what the author intended: the critical faculty is disarmed, the imagination is enthralled.

      What did Burke propose to himself when he sat down to write this book? The letter to Depont is obviously a mere peg upon which to hang his argument: the book is written for the British public. He believed himself to foresee whither the revolutionary movement in France was tending: he saw one party in England regarding it with favour, the other with indifference: he saw clear revolutionary tendencies on all sides among the people: and not a single arm was as yet raised to avert the impending catastrophe. Burke aimed at recalling the English nation to its ancient principles, and at showing the folly and imprudence of the French political movement. Burke’s independence led him even to the extent of revolting from his own party. The great historical Whig party, the party of Somers, of Walpole, and of Chatham, was slowly passing through a painful transformation, which many observers mistook for dissolution. Burke found himself constrained to desert it, and that upon an occasion which afforded an opportunity of rendering it material support. From that time forward he became a marked man. Even for Burke the act of thinking for himself was stigmatised as a crime. While the events of the French Revolution commended themselves to the leaders of his party, he ought not to have allowed it to be seen that they aroused in him nothing but anger and scorn; nor ought he to have appealed to the nation at large to support him in his opposition. Such an appeal to the general public was characteristic of definite change of allegiance. Hence the obloquy which overwhelmed the last years of his life, raised by those who had been his associates during a career of a quarter of a century. Hence his counter-denunciation of them as “New Whigs,” as renegades from the principles of the English Revolution, by virtue of the countenance they gave to the political changes which were taking place in France.

      Are Burke’s opinions in the present work consistent with those contained in the first volume? Notwithstanding that fundamental unity which may be justly claimed for Burke’s opinions,[vii] it would be idle to deny that the present treatise, like his subsequent writings, contains, on comparison with his earlier ones, certain very great discrepancies. They are, however, but few; they are obvious, and lie upon the surface. It is hard for those who live a hundred years after the time to say whether such discrepancies were or were not justifiable. Scrutiny will discover that they turn mainly upon words. The House of Lords, for instance, in the first volume of these Select Works, is asserted to be a form of popular representation; in the present, the Peers are said to hold their share in the government by original and indefeasible right. Twenty years before, Burke had said that the tithes were merely a portion of the taxation, set apart by the national will for the support of a national