LECTURES ON THE FRENCH

REVOLUTION.

LECTURE XXXIV.

BURKE A POLITICAL AND MORAL PROPHET.

THE

HE new opinions must be now considered as having entirely prevailed; the execution of the king was the consummation of their triumph. Scarcely a trace of the old opinions remained: not only was the monarch violently cast out of the political system, but the nobility, the ecclesiastical hierarchy, the feudal notions, were banished or proscribed; the principles of government, the interior organization of the kingdom, the magistracy, every thing connected with the constitution of the state, was altered. In the speeches of the different members of the Convention we see no appeal made but to the sovereignty of the people; their will, if it can but be ascertained, is supposed to be a sufficient sanction and rule the whole system is now that of a republic, a republic of the most unqualified nature. And this, then, is the result to which this great kingdom has been at last conducted by the progress of the new opinions. But no such result as this was ever in the contemplation of wise and good men when they first wished success to the Revolution in France-little that they had promised themselves had taken place; on the contrary, every thing that they would have deprecated; and on the whole, the Revolution, now arrived at the end of its first stage, must be considered as having entirely failed. What were hereafter to be the consequences, and what benefit may have already accrued to France, even as she now stands,

is not the question; it may be considerable, it may be permanent. In human affairs there is no change without some attendant advantages: a conflagration may destroy a city, and there will then be an opportunity afforded of making streets more spacious, and houses of a better construction. But the question is, whether on the execution of the king and the erection of the republic, in the situation that France stood at the close of January, 1793, the Revolution must not be considered as having failed; and whether the whole had not then become, and must for ever remain, an example and warning to mankind, of the different faults that may be committed by those who defend old opinions, and by those who assert new; by those who administer a government, and by those who would reform it; by the older part of a community, and by the more youthful; by those who are but too full of selfishness and prejudice on the one side, and those who are full of generous hope and inconsiderate folly on the other. Into great divisions of this kind may mankind always be thrown ; and this French Revolution, in the different lessons that it holds out, may always be applied, in its main principles, to every case that can possibly arise. These different lessons I have from time to time, as I proceeded, endeavoured to impress upon your consideration. There are those who may differ from me in my views of the different parties concerned, but their disagreement with me will chiefly consist in the different proportions of blame to be imputed to each party in its turn. I have kept the faults of each, as I hope, sufficiently within your observation. I know not that either party has any great reason to triumph on account of the superior propriety and virtue of its behaviour; each having, in truth, submitted to the temptations of its situation. Still there are degrees, the faults being more gross and repulsive and destructive and savage and terrific in the one instance than in the other; and not only on this account have I dwelt more anxiously and minutely on the faults of the popular party, from time to time, but because the faults of patriots are more important, as I have often suggested to you; and again, because their faults are, for some time, less discernible; for while they seem improving the institutions of their country, and their intentions are good, it is not always easy to see that

they are going too far; and above all, as I must repeat, because the consequences of their faults may be of a nature so very tremendous; lastly, because the promoters of reform, the assertors of new opinions, the makers of revolutions, are always men rising into life, as yet young, and from the changing state of their minds and opinions more (though far from sufficiently so), yet more within the reach of argument and remonstrance, of example and instruction, of the lessons of history, than are the rulers of mankind; a description of men who are older, and are become inveterate in particular trains of thought and feeling; who do not readily condescend to lessons of any kind; and who, on whatever account, are never found, in similar situations, at all wiser than those who have gone before them, but are incurably selfish and most unwisely obstinate in the maintenance of abuses and oppression, inconvenient laws and impolitic systems. On these accounts, and because I think civil liberty the greatest earthly blessing that a nation can enjoy, and bringing every other blessing in its train, I have dwelt, as I have often observed to you, with a minuteness that may have been tedious, and may have appeared unnecessary, and even unfriendly, on the mistakes and unreasonableness of the more early popular party in this Revolution, and with an indignation and horror which were surely but natural on the frightful excesses and appalling crimes of those who followed them: and the observations I am now making, I repeat again and again, that I may not be misapprehended; that I may not be supposed indifferent to the cause of the liberties of mankind, or insensible to the merits of those who assert them, because I note the faults that were by such men committed in the French Revolution, and warn all such men of the temptations of their nature. It is possible that the lessons of history, both on the one side and the other, may be thrown away, and have little or no effect on those who are to follow us; still they are in this Revolution to be found, and it is my duty, and the duty I conceive of every commentator on the past, to hold them up in the most distinct light he can, that every chance may be taken of the avoidance of such fatal mistakes in future.

With regard to the popular actors in the scene, they were not without their admonitions and their warnings, as I have

from time to time observed to you. Distinguished members in the Constituent Assembly protested loudly, and argued ably against the course that the patriots were pursuing; but they were considered as speaking from interested motives, or drawn aside by the prejudices of their situation; and it was difficult, it was totally impossible, amidst the enthusiasm and clamour of the high minded and the young, not to say the more enlightened and informed, for men of graver wisdom and of more cautious temperament to obtain a hearing. Such men, however, did exist, and did come forward; and it would be a mistake, and a very unfortunate mistake, to suppose otherwise. This is, however, one of the main lessons of the Revolution; and it must be enforced, and it must be borne away by those who read the history.

The same sort of instruction was exhibited to mankind not only by distinguished men in the Constituent Assembly, but by the great political writer of our own country, by Mr. Burke. I have already noticed this circumstance to you. Mr. Burke's writings are quite a part of this great subject of the French Revolution. I have already mentioned to you, that I should think it no mean praise if I could but assist you in appreciating their value; if I could but enable you to separate their profound philosophy, their real wisdom, from their occasional violence and fury.

Burke was a man who, from the ardour of his temperament and the vehemence of his eloquence, might be almost said to have ruined every cause and every party that he espoused: no mind, however great, that will not bow to the superiority of his genius, his talents for acquiring knowledge, his fine imagination, and the comprehensiveness of his understanding; yet no mind, however inferior, that will not occasionally feel itself entitled to look down upon him, from the total want, which he sometimes shows, of all calmness and candour, and even, at particular moments, all reasonableness and propriety of thought. I shall in this lecture quote largely from him, very largely, that I may secure in you some immediate acquaintance with his works. I shall quote from his Reflections, the best of his writings on the French Revolution; to those publications that followed, if I refer, it must be hereafter. He at length became so violent a counter-revolutionist,