Reflections On The Revolution In France

Charles-Jean-François Depont is a French aristocrat and family friend of Burke. Upon meeting Burke, he requests Burke’s observations on the events of the National Assembly thus far. Burke maintains the style of the letter, forming Reflections on the Revolution in France in the epistolary tradition, using informal and shifting styles, but it is clear that Depont is not the main audience for this letter. Depont serves to ignite a much larger political cause closer to Burke’s heart: discouraging a revolution in England, so Depont’s personal character subverts to more of an instrument for Burke’s true purpose. 

Dr. Richard Price (1723-1791) is a preacher in the Unitarian sect, to whom Burke refers to frequently in Reflections on the Revolution in France. Price enjoys membership in one of the radical Whig societies, the Revolutionary Society, which disseminates ideas in favor of the French Revolution. Burke paraphrases one of Price’s sermons:

I cannot conclude without recalling particularly to your recollection a consideration which I have more than once alluded to, and which probably your thoughts have been all along anticipating, a consideration with which my mind is impressed more than I can express. I mean the consideration of the favorableness of the present times to all exertions to the cause of liberty(53).

These words serve as the catalyst for Burke’s letter: the real audience for Burke’s tract on conservatism remains those he fears will take Price’s words to heart.

Price follows the more liberal line of Whig-Party thinking; he affiliates himself with many revolutionary thinkers of the day and often intermingles politics in his sermons. Subjectively, Burke refers to Price’s sermons as “[…] mixed up in a sort of porridge of various political opinions and reflections: but the revolution in France is the grand ingredient in the cauldron” (10-11).

He is, as Burke has feared, something of an abstract idea himself: “a political preacher” (53), a powerful speaker, infusing the audience with grand ideas, but, to Burke’s thinking, with little thought to the ramifications of putting those abstract ideas into practice. Also, in radical contrast to Burke’s more fixed notions on what clergy should provide during sermon, Burke writes, “Supposing, however, that something like moderation were visible in this political sermon, yet politics and the pulpit are terms that have little agreement. No sound ought to be heard in the church but the healing voice of Christian charity” (11-12). This aligns with both men’s character; the more-radical Price feels comfortable assuming the role of both religious and political healer, whereas Burke believes politics a specialized field and religion the institution of Providence.  

Price’s character embodies the political radicalism Burke claims unnecessary. Price advocates swift change that threatens order (Burke even goes as far as to draw a parallel between Price and Reverend Hugh Peters, a prominent player in the beheading of Charles I). Further, it is Price’s sermon, more so than the request of Depont (Burke’s French friend), that is the galvanizing force driving Burke to write this letter. Burke fears sermons like his will foster similar revolutionary action in Britain. In an effort to discredit Price’s ideas further, Burke theorizes, “Those who quit their proper character, to assume that what does not belong to them, are, for the great part, are ignorant both of the character they leave, and of the character they assume” (12). Again, this underscores Burke’s belief that men philosophize on matters of great import (they may even spur men into action), but they lack little practical experience in the matters of which they speak. By Burke’s admission, Price is an influential and popular orator; the latter, as with Burke’s entire audience in Reflections on the Revolution in France, should exercise more conservatism with such an important subject.

To Burke, Price’s ideology is particular dangerous, and Burke places Price and his followers in line with people who preach change for the sake of change. Burke states:

His zeal is of a curious character. It is not for the propagation of his own opinions, but of any opinions. It is not for the diffusion of truth, but for the spreading of contradiction. Let the noble teachers but dissent, it is no matter from whom or from what (12).

Burke uses the first part of his letter to clarify points of confusion he finds in Price’s sermon, particularly those in which Price argues the British have the right to cashier their king and elect their own government.

At the time the National Assembly met, the reigning monarch of France was Louis XVI (1754-1793), who sat on the throne as an absolute monarch; this distinguishes his position from that of the then-current British monarch, George III, a constitutional monarch (the former having absolute power over the country, appointing all orders of government, the latter answerable to governing bodies). Deposed as an absolute monarch and ultimately relegated by the Assembly as a limited-power executive hand of the French government, Louis XVI inherits the throne through the normal route: right of succession. 

Burke describes Louis XVI’s character in a fairly objective manner; he points out that the role of an absolute monarch makes as much sense as its other extreme, a direct democracy, as Burke believes both forms of government are ripe for tyranny (125). Price illustrates Louis XVI as an “arbitrary monarch” (82), a claim to which the French Revolution must agree, in order to depose him. According to Burke, no concrete evidence exists to suggest Louis the XVI, aside from some error in leniency and judgment to which all kings are capable, subjects his citizens to any type of tyranny justifying a revolution over a reformation.

In dramatic accounts of his situation, Burke offers a humanized account of Louis XVI:

As a man, it became him to feel for his wife and his children, and the faithful guards of his person, that were massacred in cold blood about him; as a prince, it became him to feel for the strange and frightful transformation of his civilized subjects, and to be more grieved for them, than solicitous for himself (75).

Here, Burke supposes that the king suffers the great loss of dignity in his post and also in that of the character of his people: he is the representation of their chivalry and civility, and in their crass treatment of him and his family, that spirit dies.