French Revolution: Edmund Burke

My first Blog entry will be about Edmund Burke. He wrote some of the letters read about in the French Revolution readings (36-73). Edmund Burke was born in Ireland and is a political writer and member of the Irish Parliament for 30 years, he went to Trinity University and went to Law school but dropped out to pursue his writing career. His opposition of the French Revolution is apparent in his writings and he also was in favor of the better treatment of the American colonies, but did support the British right to tax the colonies (47). He dignified and made a heroine out of the queen of England in His paper, Reflections on the Revolution in France. He did not support the violent overthrow and eludes to the Magna Carta and Declaration of Right of the British, which shows that peaceful command of power is possible and works, as shown by the continued success of the Parliament in Britain enforcing anti-Tyranny and limited taxation by the monarchy and nobles.

In his work, Reflections on the Revolution in France, Burke goes on to say that "Levellers can never Equalize." This and the subsequent paragraph describing this idea, describes that men have equal rights, but not to the right of equal things. By things he means that a man with only a tiny amount of stock in a property or power, cannot make the rules and will have to let the management of the state go to the ones with the most power. The Levellers are the people that try to change society for the better, but end up perverting the natural order and making things worse, as apparent by the French Revolution. (50-51). He describes the arrest and imprisonement of the King and Queen of France and tells of the brutal massacre the "thieves and cruel ruffians" descended upon the holy sanctuary of a once revered symbol of monarchy in France. The desicration of this place cannot bring anykind of peaceful ruling and legislation or be accepted by the people as a whole. Years and years of monarchy crumbled in a few hours will not bode well with the rest of Europe and send a bad message of France's stability.

He describes the barbaric philosophy of the French Revolutionaries, the life of the King and Queen are nothing more than any other person and their sacrifice will bring peace to France. He thinks this philosophy is founded by terror and lacks "solid wisdom". He goes on to describe how in ancient Greece if a writer/poet had brought this story of the French Revolution to the stage and tried to act it out, it would be thrown out by the pure "hypothetical principles" of horrible crimes and treachery. (55)

These writings tell me that Burke believed the French Revolution would not end well for France and any kind of violent overthrow with no respect for human life, even a King's, would "resort to anarchy and uncivil ruling." The power that the King had will only go to someone else, maybe with even worse morals and intentions.