Burke’s continuing relevance

In 1790, one year after revolution had broken out across the channel, the Anglo-Irish statesman Edmund Burke wrote his now classic Reflections on the Revolution in France. Many of Burke’s compatriots, especially his fellow Whigs, thought that the French were finally rid of their absolutist government and were embracing the constitutional institutions which they themselves had long enjoyed. They thus gave qualified support to the revolution.

Burke would have none of this, sensing that something more destructive was afoot in that country. The revolutionaries were going much further than to replace flawed rulers with better ones. In fact, their efforts would soon lead to a reign of terror, something that Burke foresaw in his Reflections.

The revolutionaries were in fact attempting to restart history, to eliminate ancient institutions, and ultimately to replace God with a new goddess of Reason, spelled with an upper-case R. Accordingly, they adopted a new revolutionary calendar, renumbering 1792 as Year I, along with a ten-day week. Seeking to abolish an entire way of doing things, they assumed it was possible to create an evidently superior social and political system.

Burke’s correctives

Burke instead praised the “two principles of conservation and correction,” which called for preserving what is best in a political system and using this to correct its deficiencies. No status quo entirely lacks redeeming qualities. It is far better to work with what we already have than to abolish the good along with the bad and lose the very elements that enable successful incremental reforms.

Burke also opposed the centralizing pretensions of the revolutionaries, as the government in Paris attempted to supplant all local allegiances. The new republic, established after the monarchy’s abolition in 1793, simply continued in another form the absolutism of the Bourbon monarchs, but now in the name of the people, a nebulous entity covering for the reality of developing tyranny. By contrast, Burke recognized that our public affections must begin with the local and ascend from there to a larger body politic. Best to begin with people’s existing loyalties and build upon them rather than to impose something more abstract and remote as a substitute.

Conservatives today

Although English-speaking conservatives like to claim Burke as one of their movement’s founders, Burke’s singular virtue was to acknowledge that conservation and change need not oppose each other and are, in principle, complementary. Burke would almost certainly resist self-styled conservatives who would apply revolutionary methods to implement a populist or nationalist programme. As a Christian in the Anglican tradition, Burke acknowledged human limitations and fallibility, understanding that no mere human being can recreate a political or social fabric from scratch and not suffer adverse consequences. Many professed conservatives, enamoured of a militance willing to plough through legal niceties to achieve its agenda, need to reread Burke and take his warnings to heart.