Preface

It is of great importance, that all the subjects of government should have a just idea of their natural and civil rights, and that they should be apprized when they are invaded. As few of the pieces that I have seen on the subject of government in general, or concerning the attempts which have been made on the liberty of this country, are sufficiently plain and intelligible, I have endeavoured to supply the defect, by treating of these subjects in the way of Questions and Answer, which gives me an opportunity of touching the true state of the litigated points in the clearest manner.

I have not knowingly misrepresented any facts: the reflections I have made upon them are such as I could not avoid, and the liberty I have taken with the measures of government, is no greater than the constitution of this kingdom both admits and requires; any thing farther than this, is no concern of mine. I shall contentedly and cheerfully leave the issue to the merits of the cause, and to that good Providence which disposes of all things.

Sincerely do I deplore the infatuation of those who were the authors of the measures that I have animadverted upon, but more that of those who persist in carrying them on, notwithstanding their consequences are, every day, more and more alarming.

What sort of thinker was Edmund Burke? His mind was equal to a wide range of concerns – theology, aesthetics, moral philosophy, history, political theory and public affairs – a range which seems bewilderingly diverse to the cautious eyes of a later day. In fact, these interests were intimately connected. Burke's theoretical writings suggested that the world was patterned unequally, whilst his practical works explored the possibilities of political inequality and, in the case of Reflections on the Revolution in France, defended it. The object of this introduction is to show the steps by which Burke moved to these positions.

When Burke was an undergraduate at Trinity College, Dublin, he and his friends founded a society devoted, like many such before and since, to improving themselves and the world. We discover from the club's minute book and from the writings which Burke published at the same period that he concerned himself especially about three matters: the revealed word and its effectiveness; aesthetics and virtue; and the possibilities of power and wealth for the good of society.

The first concern was expressed in ‘an extempore commonplace of the Sermon of Our Saviour on the Mount’ and was amplified when Burke asserted ‘the superior Power of Religion towards a Moral Life’.

Introduction

Burke seems to have turned to this subject after finishing his Philosophical Enquiry, published in 1757. His second edition of 1759 criticized the theory of moral sense as one which had ‘misled us both in the theory of taste and of morals’, specifying that it ‘induced us to remove the science of our duties from their proper basis, (our reason, our relations, and our necessities).’ ‘Religion’ gave Burke's ‘proper basis’ to moral theory in the course of developing a wider argument.

Why should the paper be called ‘Religion’? The common feature of moral sense and deism, two of the objects of Burke's enmity, was to his eyes an insufficient regard for God. The former had no explanatory role for Him in aesthetic or moral theory. Whilst the latter did not involve that omission, it made another by discounting His revealed word. Burke, having attended to aesthetics, turned to morals and revelation in order to relate them both to his understanding of God.

How did Burke's moral explanation use ‘our reason, our relations, and our necessities’? Relation and reason are important at the most general level. Burke used them to explain duty. He took it that we ‘cannot conceive that a reasonable Creature can be placed in any Relation that does not give rise to some Duty’. Relation, a term of scholastic origin, denotes the comparing of two ideas. For instance, we might conceive God as powerful and man as weak.

Introduction

Burke's first extended publication has baffled commentators over two centuries. For Thomas Burgh it was a juvenile squib. To William Godwin, who exploited its material for his own ends, it was ‘a treatise in which the evils of the existing political institutions are displayed … while the intention of the author was to show that these evils were to be considered as trivial’, whilst to Lord Wedgwood it offered ‘arguments against authority’. To the less engaged mind of Sir George Clark it was ‘an ironical book which still puzzles commentators who try to interpret its purpose’. The work, viewed by itself, is evidently not easy to interpret.

Its purpose is more readily intelligible if we recollect Burke's position on religion and society. Deism, which he had rejected, suggested that revelation was inessential to the divine economy because its benefits were confined to a limited section of mankind. If we set this objection in a general form we have: any state of affairs whose goods are distributed irregularly lacks a properly divine warrant. A Vindication applies the formula to the social order. In particular it suggests that political and social hierarchy – in the language of the piece Subordination – was responsible for man's ills.

Burke's argument is usually described as whimsical or ironical. It focusses upon the reductio ad absurdum of a single assumption, namely the sufficiency of nature. Deism suggested that man's natural faculties sufficed for his salvation and that revelation was superfluous or, indeed, an opportunity for evil.

Introduction

The ‘Extempore Commonplace’ and A Vindication of Natural Society suggested that revelation was recognizably part of the divine order. The earlier text had praised revelation for informing moral conduct, whilst the later work suggested that the logic of deism admitted a view of the social order unacceptable to most minds in eighteenth-century England. By the same token, A Vindication implied some approval of society as presently constituted. A further form of inequality had found its way onto Burke's agenda. His attachment to an unequal social order had been expressed at Trinity, when he adverted to its potential for good. That position now achieved a theoretical elaboration.

The Enquiry employed the idiom of nature and did so with a determinate purpose. As ‘Nature’ was attractive to the eighteenth century, the content attributed to it varied with a writer's object. Deists had emphasized nature as reason. Rousseau had found nature in the simplest of lives. Burke himself set out to show that natural passion was God's medium of expression and suggested that nature grounded inequality.

To understand Burke's case we should consider another of his interests. At Trinity he had declared himself not only about religion and property, but also about taste. Burke took the view that the province of the imagination was important for forming good morals. It followed that the beliefs people entertained about aesthetics had a bearing upon their conduct.

There are twelve chapters in this treatise. The first concerns the purpose of the narrative. The second shows how the Roman Empire had remained based through the reigns of thirty-three emperors and for 345 years and five months invariably at Rome. The third demonstrates how the peoples of the East, namely, the Persians, Arabs, Chaldeans and other bordering nations, fell from the control of the Roman Empire. The fourth identifies the principal peoples who in the circumstances already described raised rebellion of this kind. The fifth treats the beginning and ordering of the transfer of the control of the Empire from the Greeks to the Franks. The sixth explains how Pepin was elevated, in the time of Zacharias, the Pope at Rome, from master of the palace to King of the Franks. The seventh relates how Pepin, King of the Franks, at the petitioning of the Roman church, marched to Italy against Astulphus, King of the Lombards, defeated him, and restored the temporal possessions of the Roman church. The eighth, how in the time of Pope Adrian, Charlemagne was made Patrician of the city and was granted the administration of the apostolic seat at Rome. The ninth, how the transfer of control of the Roman Empire from the Greeks to the Franks was effected. The tenth, how control of the Roman Empire was transferred from the Franks or Gauls to the Germans.