Reflections on the Revolution in France by Edmund Burke 1790
Page 2 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.
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