Reflections on the Revolution in France: Section 14 Summary & Analysis

Burke looks at the journals of the Assembly of September 29, 1789, and its subsequent proceedings, to examine the “spirit […] tendency, and […] fitness” of the legislature, since one would hope to discover great ability in this part of government, if nowhere else. He will also consider the internal consistency of the legislature and its own principles.

Burke says that people can look at the effects of old establishments in order to determine their quality. Most often, these establishments were not built on theories; rather, theories were derived from them, and experience helped refine the original scheme. Errors and deviations often prompt healthy course-corrections. However, “in a new and merely theoretic system,” none of this refinement can be seen, since the builders made no attempt “to accommodate the new building to an old one.”

The new legislators sought to form their body on a basis of territory, a basis of population, and a basis of contribution. For the territorial (or geometrical) basis, they divided France into 83 squares of equal size, called departments. These, in turn, were portioned into 720 smaller districts called communes, and subdivided those once more into 6,400 cantons. Previously, the divisions of the land were more accidental, and inconveniences had been dealt with over time. By the time the state surveyors discovered that dividing France into squares might create inequalities difficult to reconcile, it was too late to change course.

The basis of population proved more difficult. It was planned at first that every man would have a vote, and vote directly for the person he wished to represent him in government. However, there is a considerable distance between a voter and his representative. First, the voters in each canton must pay three days’ labor to the public. Then, the groups of voters in each canton elect deputies to the commune, one for every 200 qualified inhabitants. Everyone who votes for the commune owes ten days’ labor. And there is yet another gradation, as the communes elect someone to the department, and the department elects deputies to the National Assembly—each deputy needing to pay a mark of silver. While Burke does not object per se to the attention to property within this system, he points out that it is “unsupportable” according the French system.

On the third basis, contribution, “they have more completely lost sight of their rights of men,” because it rests completely on property. The committee claims that this expectation does not infringe on citizens’ rights because it is only meant to ensure proportionality between cities; but Burke argues that it inevitably creates an aristocracy of the rich. It does indeed render an individual less important whose votes for three members as one who votes for ten; the franchises are not equal. The wealthy have more power.

Burke says that these three bases are not consistent with one another, because the basis of population operates on a different basis from those of territory and contribution—the latter two being of an inevitably aristocratic nature. Much depends on the population of the size of the cantons within a commune, whether it contains a trading or manufacturing town, and other factors which affect the number of representatives a canton will be able to send to the Assembly, as Burke demonstrates through several mathematical comparisons. The end result, he says, is a “fantastical and unjust inequality between mass and mass.” The system is internally inconsistent, thanks to the ideas of “your philosophers.”

Burke further contends that France’s scheme will divide France into competing republics. In “barbarously” dividing up their country according to this geometric scheme, Burke argues that their rulers “treat France exactly like a country of conquest.” They have “destroyed the bonds of their union, under colour of providing for the independence of each of their cities.” These competing cantons will find themselves “strangers to one another” and will look more like military colonies back in the waning days of the Roman Empire. “Your child comes into the world with the symptoms of death.”

Burke argues that the ancient legislators of republics understood that they “had to do with men, and they were obliged to study human nature.” Modern legislators, by contrast, “confound all sorts of citizens […] into one homogeneous mass,” and the mass into “incoherent republics.” Their preoccupation with numbers abstracts them too much from on-the-ground realities. Burke says that the British system is completely different, because there is a much closer relationship between a representative and his people, whereas in France, there are three elections and two sets of magistrates between these representative and citizen. The people really do not substantially contribute to their governance.

Finding this system incoherent, Burke looks at the “cement” for the constitution, to be found in the confiscation, the supreme power of Paris, and the army. The confiscation, with its related paper currency, could suffice to hold things together for a while; however, the confiscation might not prove to be sufficient to support the paper coinage in the long run, which will only lead to confusion. Since the currency is not based on real money and is forcibly substituted for the coin of the kingdom, it will mainly serve to put most power into the hands of the “managers and conductors of its circulation,” producing an oligarchy. The speculation-based currency, in fact, essentially turns France into “a nation of gamesters,” and the many are at the mercy of the few who oversee the game, to the inevitably disadvantage of the rural peasant.