Reflections on the Revolution in France: Section 12 Summary & Analysis

Burke points out that, had France’s “privileged nobility” been as monstrous as the revolutionaries had portrayed them, they would not have issued instructions to their representatives which “breathe the spirit of liberty as warmly, and […] recommend reformation as strongly, as any other order” of society. Everyone in France had agreed that the absolute monarchy was coming to an end; struggle only broke out afterward, when a “despotic democracy” took power.

Burke observes that although he does not know France intimately, he does know human nature, and in his observations of the French nobility, he never saw anything generally objectionable, or witnessed oppression of the common people by their superiors, to any greater degree than he has seen in England. However, they had their faults, including too great of a separation between the classes, which probably helped bring about the nobility’s downfall.

There is no fault in general, however, in belonging to the nobility. Burke argues that the struggle to maintain possession of one’s inheritance and to distinguish oneself is an instinct which helps preserve communities overall, “a graceful ornament to the civil order.” Therefore he finds the French Revolution’s degradation of the nobility to be unwarranted abuse that need never have happened; “reform very short of abolition” would have sufficed.

Burke further argues that the clergy, too, are undeserving of what has befallen them. Because they couldn’t find enough vices among living clergy, Burke claims, they have ransacked “the histories of former ages […] for every instance of oppression” they could find, justifying their own persecutions. It is unjust, Burke says, to punish people for the offenses of their ancestors.

Burke says that people do not draw the moral lessons from history that they ought to. Instead of drawing appropriate instruction from the past, people find fuel to “[revive] dissensions and animosities” from the past. There is no shortage of vices—like pride, revenge, hypocrisy, and many other such “disorderly appetites”—to critique, but such vices are causes of injustices. Things like religion, morals, and liberties are pretexts. The use of pretexts always has some deceptive appearance of genuine good. One would not, for example, “secure men from tyranny and sedition, […] by rooting out of the mind the principles to which these fraudulent pretexts apply”; if one did, one would root out “every thing that is valuable in the human breast.” By eliminating monarchs or clergy, one doesn’t eliminate the evils such might commit.

Burke argues that “wise men […] apply their remedies to vices, not to names; to the causes of evil which are permanent, not […] the transitory modes in which they appear.” If one does so, one “will be wise historically, a fool in practice.” “Wickedness is a little more inventive” than to appear in the same modes in two different ages. Thus, people “think they are waging war with intolerance” while they are actually “feeding the same odious vices in different factions, and perhaps in worse.”

By way of example, Burke discusses the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre. How does it make sense to persecute today’s Parisians for such an act, when they abhor what their predecessors did? However, the same feelings are kept alive—Burke describes a recent stage play which portrayed the massacre, particularly the cruelties of the Cardinal of Lorraine, in order to stir up Parisians’ anger against the clergy in general, banishing the archbishop of Paris in service of the current day’s prejudices. “Such,” says Burke, “is the effect of the perversion of history.”

Burke reckons that before the French Revolution, there were about 120 bishops in France, and that “depravity” was as rare among them as heroism. But today’s ruling power has “punished all prelates” by forcing them into a lower-class status and providing for the election of future clergy, thus placing the French Church at the mercy of the scheming and flattering. The contemptuous situation of clergy suggests that Christianity won’t last long in France. Indeed, Burke points out, this has been the aim of the enlightened; they intend to replace religion with something they call “civic education.”

Burke argues that those who reformed the Church in England bore no resemblance to the so-called reformers in Paris; even those who, in Burke’s view, were too partial to the teachings of their particular sect, would scorn to be associated with the cruelty of the French. Burke points out that the so-called “tolerant” of France “tolerate all opinions [but] think none to be of estimation […] equal neglect is not impartial kindness.” Toleration makes more sense when it is based on favor and a true respect for justice toward those with whom one does not agree.

Burke fears that a fanatical atheism, disseminated through writings and sermons, has “filled the populace [of Paris] with a […] savage atrocity of mind, which supersedes in them the common feelings of nature.” These fanatics aim to spread their teachings beyond France, he fears, and some in England are ready to receive them with open arms. Burke worries lest England should ever take up a policy of property confiscation like that seen in France, or that England’s citizens would become divided in a similar way. A revolutionary spirit seeks opportunities to confiscation under various names, not simply that of religion.