REFLECTIONS ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE, AND ON THE PROCEEDINGS IN CERTAIN SOCIETIES IN LONDON RELATIVE TO THAT EVENT. In a Letter intended to have been sent to a gentleman in Paris.

Burke Edmund

Published by London J. Dodsley 1790

About this Item

Second edition. 8vo, beige cloth over the original boards, lettered in gilt on a black lettering label. iv, 356 pp. A handsome and well preserved copy, still in the original printer's boards, restored at the back with cloth. A REMARKABLE COPY OF THE EDITION, STILL IN THE ORIGINAL PRINTER'S BOARDS, UNCUT AND UNTRIMMED. Burke's great work on the French Revolution went through eleven printings in the first year of publication and attest to the influence of this book, in which Burke refutes the allegations of his support for the French Revolution, and distinguishes it from legitimate revolutions to restore political traditions. This text is considered the theoretical foundation of modern conservatism, which prompted Thomas Paine to respond with his classic essay, "Rights of Man". 'Edmund Burke served in the House of Commons of Great Britain, representing the Whig party, in close alliance with liberal politician Lord Rockingham. In his political career, he vigorously defended constitutional limitation of the Crown's authority, denounced the religious persecution of Catholics in his native Ireland, voiced the grievances of Britain's American colonies, supported American Independence and vigorously pursued impeachment of Warren Hastings, the Governor-General of British India, for corruption and abuse of power. For these actions, Burke was widely respected by liberals in Great Britain, the United States and the European continent. Earlier in his career, Burke had championed many liberal causes and sided with the Americans in their war for independence. Thus, opponents and allies alike were surprised at the strength of his conviction that the French Revolution was "a disaster" and the revolutionists "a swinish multitude". Soon after the fall of the Bastille in 1789, the French aristocrat Charles-Jean-François Depont asked his impressions of the Revolution and Burke replied with two letters. The longer, second letter, drafted after he read Richard Price's speech A Discourse on the Love of Our Country in January 1790, became Reflections on the Revolution in France. Published in November 1790, the work was an instant bestseller as thirteen thousand copies were purchased in the first five weeks and by the following September had gone through eleven editions. According to Stephen Greenblatt. "part of its appeal to contemporary readers lay in the highly wrought accounts of the mob's violent treatment of the French king and queen (who at the time Burke was writing were imprisoned in Paris.)." The French king and queen were respectively executed three years later, in January and October 1793. Burke wrote that he did not like abstract thinking, that freedom and equality were different, that genuine equality must be judged by God and that liberty was a construct of the law and no excuse to do whatever one would like. He was not comfortable with radical change and believed that the revolutionaries would find themselves further in trouble as their actions would cause more problems. In his opinions, the revolutionaries did not understand that "there are no rights without corresponding duties, or without some strict qualifications". With his view of what he believed would happen to the revolutionaries, one can see why Burke did not like change. Men cannot handle large amounts of power. "When men play God", Burke said, "presently they behave like devils". In the Reflections, Burke argued that the French Revolution would end disastrously because its abstract foundations, purportedly rational, ignored the complexities of human nature and society. Further, he focused on the practicality of solutions instead of the metaphysics, writing: "What is the use of discussing a man's abstract right to food or to medicine? The question is upon the method of procuring and administering them. In this deliberation I shall always advise to call in the aid of the farmer and the physician, rather than the professor of metaphysics". Following St. Augustine and Cicero, he.

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Bibliographic Details

• Title: REFLECTIONS ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE, AND ON THE PROCEEDINGS IN CERTAIN SOCIETIES IN LONDON RELATIVE TO THAT EVENT. In a Letter intended to have been sent to a gentleman in Paris.
• Publisher: London J. Dodsley 1790
• Binding: Hardcover