Reflections on the Revolution in France
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- Clean text
- Extent:
- ~130,000 words · 611 passages
Cite this work
- APAEdmund Burke. (n.d.). Reflections on the Revolution in France. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/edmund-burke/reflections-on-the-revolution-in-france
- MLAEdmund Burke. "Reflections on the Revolution in France." SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/edmund-burke/reflections-on-the-revolution-in-france.
- ChicagoEdmund Burke. Reflections on the Revolution in France. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/edmund-burke/reflections-on-the-revolution-in-france.
What it is about
Burke's criticism of the French Revolution, written in 1790, before the Terror had begun: the founding text of modern conservatism.
Context and history
It takes the form of a letter to a young Frenchman. The underlying argument is not that monarchy is sacred, but that a society is a fabric of habits, loyalties and institutions that nobody designed and that nobody can remake from scratch on a rational plan without destroying it. Hence his distrust of abstract 'rights of man' as against the concrete rights a tradition has won over time. He predicted the Revolution would end in some general commanding everything. Paine answered him with 'Rights of Man' and Wollstonecraft with 'A Vindication of the Rights of Men'; all three works are in the corpus and repay reading together.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
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 honour 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 lie 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, be 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, lie is sensible, might be more favo