Edmund Burke - Reflections on the Revolution in France

AND ON THE PROCEEDINGS
IN CERTAIN SOCIETIES IN
LONDON RELATIVE TO THAT EVENT

Edited with an Introduction and Notes by
CONOR CRUISE OBRIEN

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First published 1790

Published in Pelican Books 1968

Reprinted in Penguin English Library 1982

Reprinted in Penguin Classics 1986

Reissued with updated Introduction and Bibliographical Note

and new Curriculum Vitae of Edmund Burke 2004

Introduction and notes copyright Penguin Books Ltd, 1968, 2004
All rights reserved

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EISBN: 9780141907888

I AM indebted to Professor Thomas Copeland, the general editor of The Correspondence of Edmund Burke (see ); to Earl Fitzwilliam for permission to use the Burke papers in the Fitzwilliam Wentworth Collection; to Mr John Babbington, Chief Librarian, and Miss R. Meredith, Librarian, Central Public Library, Sheffield, for facilitating access to these papers. Finally and especially, my thanks are due to my wife for her invaluable work on the annotation. The notes as they stand are our joint work. Professor Todd in presenting his definitive edition of the text of the Reflections spoke of peculiarities condoned by the author, which of course have been preserved in the text. If any additional peculiarities have been condoned by the editor he alone is responsible for these.

C.C.OB.

The footnotes to this text are indicated by asterisks, daggers, etc.

The superior numbers (thus: 48) refer to the notes by the editor of this Pelican edition. They are to be found on p. 378ff.

THE MANIFESTO OF A COUNTER-REVOLUTION

THE spectre haunting Europe in The Communist Manifesto (1848), and haunting the world today [1968], walks for the first time in the pages of Burke:

out of the tomb of the murdered monarchy in France has arisen a vast, tremendous, unformed spectre, in a far more terrifick guise than any which ever yet have overpowered the imagination, and subdued the fortitude of man. Going straight forward to its end, unappalled by peril, unchecked by remorse, despising all common maxims and all common means, that hideous phantom overpowered those who could not believe it was possible she could at all exist, except on the principles, which habit rather than nature had persuaded them were necessary to their own particular welfare, and to their own ordinary modes of action.

The revolution which Burke feared is not of course identical with Marxs Communist revolution, but has much essential in common with it, and in some ways more in common with it than with the actual French and elsewhere, some of the best examples of that aristocratic critique of the bourgeoisie, to which the Communist Manifesto allows a provisional and sardonic welcome. Burke and Marx both sought to understand the revolutionary principles at work in France Burke in order to stop them from spreading, and to destroy the nucleus of infection; Marx in order to hasten the victory of a new revolution, bringing with it the triumph of all that for Burke had been most hateful though not of that which had been most contemptible in the old one.

The great revolutions of our own time, those of Russia and China, came, under Marxist leadership, in lands which had never known an equivalent of the French Revolution. France, itself, and those other Western countries most exposed to the Enlightenment, and like Britain and the United States least resistant to those principles of political democracy which Burke abhorred, are not among the most revolutionary in the world today. The country which was the fulcrum of counter-revolution in his day the country whose Empress he praisedI shall return to this topic, in considering the relevance of Burke to the militant anti-communism of our own day. First, however since Burkes own attitude to the Revolution was not all at once a crusading one it is necessary to discuss the actual development of his opinions, emotions and apprehensions about the Revolution, to the extent to which these are revealed in his surviving writings.