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The Conservative Revolution of Edmund Burke
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2009
Extract
EdmundBurke enjoys the rather unusual distinction of having been both a revolutionary and a conservative at one and the same time. Before and after Burke, men have begun life as radical firebrands and ended it as reactionaries; but Burke combined the two attitudes, although in differing proportions, now one or the other predominating, almost throughout the course of his life. For example, Burke approved unreservedly of the Glorious Revolution of 1688, accepted the American Revolution of 1776, and called for a drastic change in the administration of British India; yet, he became the first thinker to propound a comprehensive statement of modern conservatism. He favored the Polish Reform of 1791, the freeing of Irish trade, the relief from religious disabilities of the Catholics, and the promotion of religious tolerance; yet, he lauded prescription and traditionalism. It is this ever-present dualism of thought in Burke which has so consistently disturbed scholars and historians of political theory and made it so difficult for them to place him in one camp or another.
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- Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1958
References
1 For the notion of conservatism as self-conscious traditionalism, cf. Mannheim, Karl's article, “Das konservative Denken,” Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik, LVII (1927).Google Scholar
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4 Ibid., Vol. III, 229.
5 The decline in Burke's Indian stock holdings forced him to mortgage Gregories, as he named his estate, to the hilt.
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8 Quoted in SirMagnus, Philip, Edmund Burke. A Life (London, 1939), p. 116.Google Scholar
9 Cf. Copeland, Thomas W., Our Eminent Friend Edmund Burke. Six Essays (New Haven, 1949), especially Chapter II.Google Scholar
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13 Burke's future respect for the “letter of the law” must be placed next to his disdain for lawyers and his own abandonment of the profession.
14 Cf. Fletcher, F. T. H., Montesquieu and English Politics (1750–1800) (London, 1939), p. 212.Google Scholar
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17 Ibid., 439.
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20 Compare the earlier use of this idea by Halifax in his Character of a Trimmer, where he says: This innocent word Trimmer signifieth no more than this, that if men are together in a boat, and one part of the company would weigh it down on one side, another would make it lean as much to the contrary; it happeneth there is a third opinion of those who conceive it would do as well if the boat went even, without endangering the passengers.” This is quoted in Reed, A. W., “George Saville, Marquis of Halifax” in The Social and Political Ideas of Some English Thinkers of the Augustan Age A. D. 1650–1750, ed. by Hearnshaw, F. J. C. (London, 1928), pp. 62–63.Google Scholar
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25 Ibid., Vol. IV, 101.
26 Ibid., 197.
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29 Ibid., 186.
30 Ibid., Vol. VI, 259.
31 Ibid., Vol. II, 217.
32 This shift, in essence, marked the appearance in history of the “people” as a major political force.