Reflections on the Revolution in France
 
by Edmund Burke
 
 
 
IT MAY NOT BE UNNECESSARY to inform the reader that the following 
 
Reflections had their origin in a correspondence between the Author and a 
 
very young gentleman at Paris, who did him the honor of desiring his 
 
opinion upon the important transactions which then, and ever since, have so 
 
much occupied the attention of all men. An answer was written some time in 
 
the month of October 1789, but it was kept back upon prudential 
 
considerations. That letter is alluded to in the beginning of the following 
 
sheets. It has been since forwarded to the person to whom it was addressed. 
 
The reasons for the delay in sending it were assigned in a short letter to 
 
the same gentleman. This produced on his part a new and pressing 
 
application for the Author's sentiments.
 
 
 
The Author began a second and more full discussion on the subject. This he 
 
had some thoughts of publishing early in the last spring; but, the matter 
 
gaining upon him, he found that what he had undertaken not only far 
 
exceeded the measure of a letter, but that its importance required rather a 
 
more detailed consideration than at that time he had any leisure to bestow 
 
upon it. However, having thrown down his first thoughts in the form of a 
 
letter, and, indeed, when he sat down to write, having intended it for a 
 
private letter, he found it difficult to change the form of address when 
 
his sentiments had grown into a greater extent and had received another 
 
direction. A different plan, he is sensible, might be more favorable to a 
 
commodious division and distribution of his matter.
 
 
 
Dear Sir,
 
 
 
You are pleased to call again, and with some earnestness, for my thoughts 
 
on the late proceedings in France. I will not give you reason to imagine 
 
that I think my sentiments of such value as to wish myself to be solicited 
 
about them. They are of too little consequence to be very anxiously either 
 
communicated or withheld. It was from attention to you, and to you only, 
 
that I hesitated at the time when you first desired to receive them. In the 
 
first letter I had the honor to write to you, and which at length I send, I 
 
wrote neither for, nor from, any description of men, nor shall I in this. 
 
My errors, if any, are my own. My reputation alone is to answer for them.
 
 
 
You see, Sir, by the long letter I have transmitted to you, that though I 
 
do most heartily wish that France may be animated by a spirit of rational 
 
liberty, and that I think you bound, in all honest policy, to provide a 
 
permanent body in which that spirit may reside, and an effectual organ by 
 
which it may act, it is my misfortune to entertain great doubts concerning 
 
several material points in your late transactions.
 
 
 
YOU IMAGINED, WHEN YOU WROTE LAST, that I might possibly be reckoned among 
 
the approvers of certain proceedings in France, from the solemn public seal 
 
of sanction they have received from two clubs of gentlemen in London, 
 
called the Constitutional Society and the Revolution Society.
 
 
 
I certainly have the honor to belong to more clubs than one, in which the 
 
constitution of this kingdom and the principles of the glorious Revolution 
 
are held in high reverence, and I reckon myself among the most forward in 
 
my zeal for maintaining that constitution and those principles in their 
 
utmost purity and vigor. It is because I do so, that I think it necessary 
 
for me that there should be no mistake. Those who cultivate the memory of 
 
our Revolution and those who are attached to the constitution of this 
 
kingdom will take good care how they are involved with persons who, under 
 
the pretext of zeal toward the Revolution and constitution, too frequently 
 
wander from their true principles and are ready on every occasion to depart 
 
from the firm but cautious and deliberate spirit which produced the one, 
 
and which presides in the other. Before I proceed to answer the more 
 
material particulars in your letter, I shall beg leave to give you such 
 
information as I have been able to obtain of the two clubs which have 
 
thought proper, as bodies, to interfere in the concerns of France, first 
 
assuring you that I am not, and that I have never been, a member of either 
 
of those societies.
 
 
 
The first, calling itself the Constitutional Society, or Society for 
 
Constitutional Information, or by some such title, is, I believe, of seven 
 
or eight years standing. The institution of this society appears to be of a 
 
charitable and so far of a laudable nature; it was intended for the 
 
circulation, at the expense of the members, of many books which few others 
 
would be at the expense of buying, and which might lie on the hands of the 
 
booksellers, to the great loss of an useful body of men. Whether the books, 
 
so charitably circulated, were ever as charitably read is more than I know. 
 
Possibly several of them have been exported to France and, like goods not 
 
in request here, may with you have found a market. I have heard much talk 
 
of the lights to be drawn from books that are sent from hence. What 
 
improvements they have had in their passage (as it is said some liquors are 
 
meliorated by crossing the sea) I cannot tell; but I never heard a man of 
 
common judgment or the least degree of information speak a word in praise 
 
of the greater part of the publications circulated by that society, nor 
 
have their proceedings been accounted, except by some of themselves, as of 
 
any serious consequence.
 
 
 
Your National Assembly seems to entertain much the same opinion that I do 
 
of this poor charitable club. As a nation, you reserved the whole stock of 
 
your eloquent acknowledgments for the Revolution Society, when their 
 
fellows in the Constitutional were, in equity, entitled to some share. 
 
Since you have selected the Revolution Society as the great object of your 
 
national thanks and praises, you will think me excusable in making its late 
 
conduct the subject of my observations. The National Assembly of France has 
 
given importance to these gentlemen by adopting them; and they return the 
 
favor by acting as a committee in England for extending the principles of 
 
the National Assembly. Henceforward we must consider them as a kind of 
 
privileged persons, as no inconsiderable members in the diplomatic body. 
 
This is one among the revolutions which have given splendor to obscurity, 
 
and distinction to undiscerned merit. Until very lately I do not recollect 
 
to have heard of this club. I am quite sure that it never occupied a moment 
 
of my thoughts, nor, I believe, those of any person out of their own set. I 
 
find, upon inquiry, that on the anniversary of the Revolution in 1688, a 
 
club of dissenters, but of what denomination I know not, have long had the 
 
custom of hearing a sermon in one of their churches; and that afterwards 
 
they spent the day cheerfully, as other clubs do, at the tavern. But I 
 
never heard that any public measure or political system, much less that the 
 
merits of the constitution of any foreign nation, had been the subject of a 
 
formal proceeding at their festivals, until, to my inexpressible surprise, 
 
I found them in a sort of public capacity, by a congratulatory address, 
 
giving an authoritative sanction to the proceedings of the National 
 
Assembly in France.
 
 
 
In the ancient principles and conduct of the club, so far at least as they 
 
were declared, I see nothing to which I could take exception. I think it 
 
very probable that for some purpose new members may have entered among 
 
them, and that some truly Christian politicians, who love to dispense 
 
benefits but are careful to conceal the hand which distributes the dole, 
 
may have made them the instruments of their pious designs. Whatever I may 
 
have reason to suspect concerning private management, I shall speak of 
 
nothing as of a certainty but what is public.
 
 
 
For one, I should be sorry to be thought, directly or indirectly, concerned 
 
in their proceedings. I certainly take my full share, along with the rest 
 
of the world, in my individual and private capacity, in speculating on what 
 
has been done or is doing on the public stage in any place ancient or 
 
modern; in the republic of Rome or the republic of Paris; but having no 
 
general apostolical mission, being a citizen of a particular state and 
 
being bound up, in a considerable degree, by its public will, I should 
 
think it at least improper and irregular for me to open a formal public 
 
correspondence with the actual government of a foreign nation, without the 
 
express authority of the government under which I live.
 
 
 
I should be still more unwilling to enter into that correspondence under 
 
anything like an equivocal description, which to many, unacquainted with 
 
our usages, might make the address, in which I joined, appear as the act of 
 
persons in some sort of corporate capacity acknowledged by the laws of this 
 
kingdom and authorized to speak the sense of some part of it. On account of 
 
the ambiguity and uncertainty of unauthorized general descriptions, and of 
 
the deceit which may be practiced under them, and not from mere formality, 
 
the House of Commons would reject the most sneaking petition for the most 
 
trifling object, under that mode of signature to which you have thrown open 
 
the folding doors of your presence chamber, and have ushered into your 
 
National Assembly with as much ceremony and parade, and with as great a 
 
bustle of applause, as if you have been visited by the whole representative 
 
majesty of the whole English nation. If what this society has thought 
 
proper to send forth had been a piece of argument, it would have signified 
 
little whose argument it was. It would be neither the more nor the less 
 
convincing on account of the party it came from. But this is only a vote 
 
and resolution. It stands solely on authority; and in this case it is the 
 
mere authority of individuals, few of whom appear. Their signatures ought, 
 
in my opinion, to have been annexed to their instrument. The world would 
 
then have the means of knowing how many they are; who they are; and of what 
 
value their opinions may be, from their personal abilities, from their 
 
knowledge, their experience, or their lead and authority in this state. To 
 
me, who am but a plain man, the proceeding looks a little too refined and 
 
too ingenious; it has too much the air of a political strategem adopted for 
 
the sake of giving, under a high-sounding name, an importance to the public 
 
declarations of this club which, when the matter came to be closely 
 
inspected, they did not altogether so well deserve. It is a policy that has 
 
very much the complexion of a fraud.
 
 
 
I flatter myself that I love a manly, moral, regulated liberty as well as 
 
any gentleman of that society, be he who he will; and perhaps I have given 
 
as good proofs of my attachment to that cause in the whole course of my 
 
public conduct. I think I envy liberty as little as they do to any other 
 
nation. But I cannot stand forward and give praise or blame to anything 
 
which relates to human actions, and human concerns, on a simple view of the 
 
object, as it stands stripped of every relation, in all the nakedness and 
 
solitude of metaphysical abstraction. Circumstances (which with some 
 
gentlemen pass for nothing) give in reality to every political principle 
 
its distinguishing color and discriminating effect. The circumstances are 
 
what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to 
 
mankind. Abstractedly speaking, government, as well as liberty, is good; 
 
yet could I, in common sense, ten years ago, have felicitated France on her 
 
enjoyment of a government (for she then had a government) without inquiry 
 
what the nature of that government was, or how it was administered? Can I 
 
now congratulate the same nation upon its freedom? Is it because liberty in 
 
the abstract may be classed amongst the blessings of mankind, that I am 
 
seriously to felicitate a madman, who has escaped from the protecting 
 
restraint and wholesome darkness of his cell, on his restoration to the 
 
enjoyment of light and liberty? Am I to congratulate a highwayman and 
 
murderer who has broke prison upon the recovery of his natural rights? This 
 
would be to act over again the scene of the criminals condemned to the 
 
galleys, and their heroic deliverer, the metaphysic Knight of the Sorrowful 
 
Countenance.
 
 
 
When I see the spirit of liberty in action, I see a strong principle at 
 
work; and this, for a while, is all I can possibly know of it. The wild 
 
gas, the fixed air, is plainly broke loose; but we ought to suspend our 
 
judgment until the first effervescence is a little subsided, till the 
 
liquor is cleared, and until we see something deeper than the agitation of 
 
a troubled and frothy surface. I must be tolerably sure, before I venture 
 
publicly to congratulate men upon a blessing, that they have really 
 
received one. Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver, and 
 
adulation is not of more service to the people than to kings. I should, 
 
therefore, suspend my congratulations on the new liberty of France until I 
 
was informed how it had been combined with government, with public force, 
 
with the discipline and obedience of armies, with the collection of an 
 
effective and well-distributed revenue, with morality and religion, with 
 
the solidity of property, with peace and order, with civil and social 
 
manners. All these (in their way) are good things, too, and without them 
 
liberty is not a benefit whilst it lasts, and is not likely to continue 
 
long. The effect of liberty to individuals is that they may do what they 
 
please; we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk 
 
congratulations which may be soon turned into complaints. Prudence would 
 
dictate this in the case of separate, insulated, private men, but liberty, 
 
when men act in bodies, is power. Considerate people, before they declare 
 
themselves, will observe the use which is made of power and particularly of 
 
so trying a thing as new power in new persons of whose principles, tempers, 
 
and dispositions they have little or no experience, and in situations where 
 
those who appear the most stirring in the scene may possibly not be the 
 
real movers.
 
 
 
ALL these considerations, however, were below the transcendental dignity of 
 
the Revolution Society. Whilst I continued in the country, from whence I 
 
had the honor of writing to you, I had but an imperfect idea of their 
 
transactions. On my coming to town, I sent for an account of their 
 
proceedings, which had been published by their authority, containing a 
 
sermon of Dr. Price, with the Duke de Rochefoucault's and the Archbishop of 
 
Aix's letter, and several other documents annexed. The whole of that 
 
publication, with the manifest design of connecting the affairs of France 
 
with those of England by drawing us into an imitation of the conduct of the 
 
National Assembly, gave me a considerable degree of uneasiness. The effect 
 
of that conduct upon the power, credit, prosperity, and tranquility of 
 
France became every day more evident. The form of constitution to be 
 
settled for its future polity became more clear. We are now in a condition 
 
to discern, with tolerable exactness, the true nature of the object held up 
 
to our imitation. If the prudence of reserve and decorum dictates silence 
 
in some circumstances, in others prudence of a higher order may justify us 
 
in speaking our thoughts. The beginnings of confusion with us in England 
 
are at present feeble enough, but, with you, we have seen an infancy still 
 
more feeble growing by moments into a strength to heap mountains upon 
 
mountains and to wage war with heaven itself. Whenever our neighbor's house 
 
is on fire, it cannot be amiss for the engines to play a little on our own. 
 
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions than ruined by too 
 
confident a security.
 
 
 
Solicitous chiefly for the peace of my own country, but by no means 
 
unconcerned for yours, I wish to communicate more largely what was at first 
 
intended only for your private satisfaction. I shall still keep your 
 
affairs in my eye and continue to address myself to you. Indulging myself 
 
in the freedom of epistolary intercourse, I beg leave to throw out my 
 
thoughts and express my feelings just as they arise in my mind, with very 
 
little attention to formal method. I set out with the proceedings of the 
 
Revolution Society, but I shall not confine myself to them. Is it possible 
 
I should? It appears to me as if I were in a great crisis, not of the 
 
affairs of France alone, but of all Europe, perhaps of more than Europe. 
 
All circumstances taken together, the French revolution is the most 
 
astonishing that has hitherto happened in the world. The most wonderful 
 
things are brought about, in many instances by means the most absurd and 
 
ridiculous, in the most ridiculous modes, and apparently by the most 
 
contemptible instruments. Everything seems out of nature in this strange 
 
chaos of levity and ferocity, and of all sorts of crimes jumbled together