Core Conservatism: Edmund Burke’s Landmark Definition

Copyright © 2020 Graham R. Catlin.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

WestBow Press

A Division of Thomas Nelson & Zondervan

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.westbowpress.com

1 (866) 928-1240

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-9736-8580-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9736-8579-1 (e)

WestBow Press rev. date:  02/25/2020

Graham R. Catlin read Modern History

at Exeter College, Oxford.

He is the author of the internet platform www.Rightwing.

institute and has lived several years in France

The Gospel of Matthew in the Bible, chapter 6 and verse 24

In the spirit of Edmund Burke’s philosophy, this edition

of his work is dedicated to young people today

May they know the blessing of liberty and security which

his doctrine reflects, and may they pass on this knowledge

and understanding to the coming generations

CONTENTS

Why This Edition of Edmund Burke’s Reflections?

Introduction to Edmund Burke’s Reflections

Edited Highlights of Edmund Burke’s Political Philosophy

In Reflections on The Revolution in France

Core Principles of Conservatism Distilled from Reflections

Structure and Contents Index for Edmund Burke’s Reflections

Note About the Text of Reflections

The paragraph numbered text of Burke’s Reflections

WHY THIS EDITION

OF EDMUND BURKE’S

REFLECTIONS?

Conservatism today is not just misunderstood, it is maligned. Anything associated with being Right Wing is judged by the prevalent, intellectual climate in western democracies to be at best archaic, if not dangerous and oppressive.

Such an estimation is a reflection on those who make it and on their philosophy. Their system of thinking was identified by Edmund Burke as atheistical fanaticism. It is the fruit of Enlightenment thinking and its pre-eminence among western intellectuals and commentators today represents the success of the Materialist worldview and its associated value system.

The psychology manifest by this mind set is condescending, censorious and dismissive. Its sense of its own rectitude and objectivity is such that it refuses even to consider evidence which might in any way challenge its supremacy. It is itself guilty of the very ‘sins’ it condemns in others. It resembles a religious cult: it is psychologically incapable of rational self-examination and automatically interprets everything according to its own predetermined and eccentric view of the world.

Edmund Burke saw it, and analysed it, long before it gained the ascendancy which it has today. He saw the danger, and he saw that the response was to rehearse and promote the value of the English tradition founded on experience as refined by the Protestant Christian worldview. Hence this edition of Edmund Burke’s landmark statement of Conservatism. To restate the precious insights of a man at once both philosopher and political practitioner.

But those thoughts were expressed in a book written in the format of a continuous personal letter with no chapter titles or system of reference to access the extensive content. This edition solves both problems and also provides a blog post length Introduction, a 10,000 word summary of edited highlights, and a distillation of Edmund Burke’s doctrine to 3 strategic principles and 10 key Tenets.

INTRODUCTION TO EDMUND

BURKE’S REFLECTIONS

Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France remains a landmark statement of the perspective and principles of Conservatism in the English speaking world. It has earned Burke a reputation as the father of Conservatism.

Edmund Burke wrote his Reflections at the age of 60 after a career as a writer and Whig politician in the cause of parliamentary power in the face of Executive authority; as a champion of the rights of the exploited, be they Irish, American or Indian. In short, as a dissident and as a ‘progressive’ in politics – what today many would view as ‘left wing’.

Why, then, did a progressive become a reactionary?

In short, the catastrophic upheavals of the French Revolution, inspired by the Materialistic thinking of the Enlightenment with its emphasis on the abstract rights of man. Edmund Burke realised that he was witnessing a paradigm shift in the understanding and practice of politics – the Christian worldview, the reality of the human condition and the wisdom of experience were being displaced by a Materialistic, atheistic worldview which rejected the past in preference for a new world order based on an anthropocentric, ‘apostolic’ Ideal. Edmund Burke called it "atheistical fanaticism – today we know it as political correctness".

Edmund Burke wrote Reflections to counter the assumption that the Revolution in France should be imported to the British Isles. Instead, he maintained the reverse – that the French should emulate the English constitution as a true and proven guarantor of liberty.

In reality the French Revolutionary assertion of metaphysical and philosophical Rights was a disaster for liberty and for the true welfare of the French people.

For Edmund Burke, circumstance defines and characterises every political scheme as either beneficial or obnoxious; the mere assertion of grand sounding philosophical abstractions is vacuous and misleading.

And the circumstances of the French Revolution were a disaster.

Why?

Because its leaders failed to appreciate the fundamental principles and practice necessary to good government.

Good order is the basis of all good things, writes Burke in his Reflections.

Good order and good government derive from respect for the accumulated wisdom of the past. Only great grievance should prompt reform, and then that reform should repair – not demolish; reform should be in keeping with the style of the existing constitutional edifice.

I would not exclude alteration neither; but even when I changed, it should be to preserve.

Thus Edmund Burke defines a central tenet of modern conservative political thinking. The purpose of change, any change, must be to conserve the institutions and practice based on the accumulated wisdom of the ages. Reform must enhance, not destroy.

Edmund Burke was one of the great figures of the 18th century. He knew Adam Smith and John Hume. He was also acquainted with Rousseau. He was a philosopher and thinker, a practical and experienced politician whose worldview emanated from his faith in the God of Christianity.

It is not possible to appreciate Edmund Burke’s politics properly without understanding the paramount importance of his Christian worldview. It explains all he says, and it explains his adherence to the proven foundations of liberty. It explains a political career which took a principled and realistic stand for the best interests of the people of France in 1790; for the people in the colonies of America ahead of their revolution against Britain; for the people of Ireland in relation to Britain; and for the people of India in relation to the East India Company.

Edmund Burke’s starting point and perspective is practical and experiential; it is not theoretical and ideological. This, of course, sets him in opposition to the idealistic and rational mentality of Enlightenment thinking.

Enlightenment thinking stresses the scientific and rational dimension of our existence. It sees scientific progress as pointing to a purely materialistic explanation for our world; it views the spiritual as mere superstition. God is a convenient device to keep the masses in subjection to established rulers and to sustain traditional privilege. God does not exist.

The French Declaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen was an expression of this thinking. It was also the intellectual and philosophical justification for the French Revolution - a Revolution which overthrew the existing order of Monarchy, Church, and Nobility.

It sought to establish one secular nation centred on Paris, organised on purely rational principles: the entire territory of France was divided geometrically into new departements. Everything was to be rational and equal in the belief that this would enable the people to be truly free.

In practice, however, the sheer upheaval and novelty gave rise to serious inconsistencies and tension resulting later in the murderous Terror and the subsequent emergence of the Dictator and Emperor, Napoleon Bonaparte.

Burke anticipated all this in his Reflections on the Revolution in France.

Edmund Burke could trace the trend of events because he possessed a keen insight into the fundamental principles and practice of politics. He was both a philosopher and a practitioner of politics. And he was a man with a deep sense of justice for all.

Where the Philosophes of the Revolution and the Enlightenment asserted the superiority of man’s rational intellect, Edmund Burke instead prioritised the innate sense of moral sensibility which every person possesses: -

Conscience and Compassion

Edmund Burke writes of the disturbing and costly upheavals in France:

In events like these, our passions instruct our reason

Edmund Burke starts from an intensely compassionate place. He starts with the true needs and welfare of human beings – not Rights. His recurring complaint against the rationalist revolutionaries was that their fine Ideals came at a very high human price. This is clear in his discussion of the new Assembly’s management of the public finances in the closing paragraphs of Reflections.

Writing about the deteriorating finances of the French State consequent to the short-sighted policy of confiscating Church property, he says:

This is the finance of philosophy! This is the result of all the delusions held out to engage a miserable people in rebellion, murder and sacrilege, and to make them prompt and zealous instruments in the ruin of their country.

Edmund Burke starts with the reality of our humanity, and rejects abstract idealism. He starts with the human need for identity – identity linked to our family, locality, nation, and past. He prizes the accumulated wisdom of human experience over time.

The French were now in serious difficulty because they had no regard for their past; they assumed that everything associated with the traditional order was bad and must therefore be eradicated.

Burke himself recognised that the need for change was pressing. But King Louis XVI had shown himself open to new ideas to reform the government and finances of France. There was already scope, says Burke, to formulate and introduce workable reforms. But the French Revolutionaries took the radical route and destroyed everything without considering the practical consequences of what they introduced. The proper practice of politics does not do that.

For Edmund Burke politicians must be experienced, skilled and cautious. They should be people who recognise the accumulated wisdom of the ages in their country’s institutions. What is passed to us by our forebears must be passed on, intact and enhanced, to the next generation. There is a duty upon each generation to do so.

This inherited constitution stands above all and especially above any transient political interest, movement or idea. Its superiority and its primacy rest on its proven utility. Abstract ideological novelties stand in stark contrast - and that makes them suspect.

The way to deal with change is exemplified by the English in their politics and constitution. The English constitution was worth preserving because it claimed and asserted our Rights as an entailed inheritance – not as an abstraction, but as an inherited reality.

You will observe, that from Magna Carta to the Declaration of Right, it has been the uniform policy of our constitution to claim and assert our liberties, as an entailed inheritance derived to us from our forefathers, and to be transmitted to our posterity; as an estate specially belonging to the people of this kingdom without any reference whatever to any more general or prior right.

The people of England well know, that the idea of inheritance furnishes a sure principle of conservation, and a sure principle of transmission; without at all excluding a principle of improvement. It leaves acquisition free; but it secures what it acquires….

Thus … in what we improve we are never wholly new; in what we retain we are never wholly obsolete.

The analogy of inherited property reflects Burke’s way of thinking and his fundamental concern for property rights as a fundamental right. He was alive to the critical importance of the security of property as a litmus test for the security of all liberty.

His fundamental concern for both established Christian religion and for the security of property led him to dwell at length in his Reflections on the confiscation of ecclesiastical property – both its causes and its consequences.

The confiscations typified the antipathy of the Revolutionaries for the old order, and their disastrous short-sightedness as to the practical consequences - consequences foreseeable by anyone alive to the realities of finance and business.

By confiscating ecclesiastical property and using it to back their assignats, the Revolutionaries attacked the very foundations of stability and prosperity. Thus, they not only failed to solve the problem of France’s debt, they actually made it worse, seriously damaging the credibility of the wider financial system.

By prioritising the Ideal of liberty, the French in fact trashed what little liberty they had; they destroyed a reforming ruler; and they made the lot of both government and people far, far worse.

Edmund Burke’s concern remains relevant in the 21st century. Today we are not witnessing violent, bloody revolution on the streets with government being physically overthrown. No, today we witness a far more insidious but effective revolution. Today’s atheistical fanatics wage psychological and conceptual war; they have infiltrated the centres of power and influence in media, academia, government, politics, religion and law. Their thinking is insistent and intolerant; it takes no prisoners and its aim is total control. It has displaced the Christian God of love, compassion and forgiveness with a callous and impersonal Ideal to which all are required to conform their thoughts and deeds. Today more than ever we need to heed the wisdom and words of Edmund Burke.

EDITED HIGHLIGHTS

OF EDMUND BURKE’S

POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

IN REFLECTIONS ON THE

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE

Reflections was written to discourage the reader from believing in false and dangerous parallels between the English Revolution of 1688/9 and the revolutionary upheaval in France one century later. The English Revolution was a minor deviation to preserve the broad tradition; the French, however, was a total upheaval inspired by metaphysical, abstract conceptions of Liberty and Rights. Contrary to the claims of the French Revolution’s supporters, Burke points out that the two events are not the same. As he outlines, compares and contrasts these two events, Edmund Burke lays out the perspective, principles and paradigm of modern Conservative political philosophy.

The great issue raised by the French Revolution is Liberty and Burke tells us in paragraph 10 how we should treat such abstract notions:

I cannot stand forward and give praise or blame to anything which relates to human actions, and human concerns on a simple view of the object as it stands stripped of every relation, in all the nakedness and solitude of metaphysical abstraction. Circumstances give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing color and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind.

What is the context? How does it actually work in practice? As Burke goes on to explain at length in the main body of the work, the English Revolution maintained the accumulated heritage of freedom over the centuries since the Magna Carta of 1215. It was entirely different from the revolutionary upheaval in France in 1789/90.

Edmund Burke begins his main discourse by addressing three particular assertions made in a speech by Dr Richard Price on the 4th November 1789.

Price is described as a non-conforming minister of eminence and the speech was given to a meeting of the Revolution Society. The speech is important because Burke believes it expresses the principles of an adulatory address sent by the Revolution Society to the National Assembly in France.

Such encouragement worries Edmund Burke. He does not want the French to think that the Revolution Society expresses either the popular and orthodox thinking of England toward the French Revolution, or that the English Revolution provides any precedent or justification for the current upheaval in France.

In the speech endorsing the French Revolution, Dr Price made certain claims about what the English Revolution of 1688/9 achieved. Those claims are elaborated in paragraph 22 and then examined historically and politically by Edmund Burke.

1. To choose our own governors [paras 22 to 40]

2. To cashier [dismiss] governments for misconduct [paras 41 to 48]

3. To frame a government of their own choosing [paras 49 to 56]

In a preliminary, general response to these claims, Burke cites the Declaration of Right. In paragraphs 23 and 24 he says:

If the principles of the Revolution of 1688 are anywhere to be found, it is in the statute called the Declaration of Right. In that most wise, sober and considerate declaration, drawn up by great lawyers and great statesmen, and not by warm and inexperienced enthusiasts, not one word is said, nor one suggestion made, of a general right to choose our own governors; to cashier them for misconduct; and to form a government for ourselves.

This Declaration of Right (the act of the 1st of William and Mary, sess. 2 ch. 2) is the cornerstone of our constitution, as reinforced, explained, improved, and in its fundamental principles for ever settled. It is called An Act for declaring the rights and liberties of the subject, and for settling the succession of the Crown.

You will observe that these rights and this succession are declared in one body, and bound indissolubly together.

Burke then addresses each of the claims in turn and shows them to be the result of confused thinking based on supposition.

Reference claim one, to choose our kings, Burke says this in paragraph 26:

Unquestionably there was at the Revolution, in the person of King William, a small and temporary deviation from the strict order of a regular hereditary succession; but to all those who did not wish in effect to recall King James, or to deluge their country in blood, and again to bring their religion, laws, and liberties into the peril they had just escaped, it was an act of necessity, in the strictest moral sense in which necessity can be taken.

Edmund Burke goes on in his discussion under this head to elaborate the heart of Conservative thinking in relation to the status quo and to change. In paragraphs 32 and 33 he says:

Even in that extremity (if we take the measure of our rights by our exercise of them at the Revolution) the change is to be confined to the peccant part only; to the part which produced the necessary deviation; and even then it is to be effected without a decomposition of the whole civil and political mass, for the purpose of originating a new civil order out of the first elements of society.

A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation The two principles of conservation and correction operated strongly at the two critical periods of the Restoration and Revolution when England found itself without a king in both cases they regenerated the deficient part of the old constitution through the parts which were not impaired At no time did the sovereign legislature manifest a more tender regard to that fundamental principle of British constitutional policy than at the time of the Revolution when it deviated from the direct line of hereditary succession. The crown was carried somewhat out of the line in which it had before moved; but the new line was derived from the same stock. It was still a hereditary descent; still an in hereditary descent in the same blood, though an hereditary descent qualified with Protestantism. When the legislature altered the direction, but kept the principle, they showed that they held it inviolable.

From paragraph 41 Edmund Burke considers the second claim which Dr Price asserts the 1688 Revolution established, namely the right to dismiss governments for misconduct.

Again Burke puts everything into the context of what happened and articulates for us the key constitutional issues. He asserts that far from engendering instability in government, the men of the English Revolution were anxious to make the Revolution a parent of settlement, and not a nursery of future revolutions.

Paragraph 42 opens with the words,

No government could stand a moment if it could be blown down with anything so loose and indefinite as an opinion of misconduct. They who led at the Revolution.charged him [James II] with nothing less than a design, confirmed by a multitude of illegal overt acts, to subvert the Protestant church and state, and their fundamental, unquestionable laws and liberties: they charged him with having broken the original contract between king and people. This was more than misconduct.

And the measures the fathers of the English Revolution took to correct this breach of contract were practical, institutional and legal – not upheaval.

The rule laid down for government in the Declaration of Right, the constant inspection by parliament, the practical claim of impeachment, they thought infinitely a better security not only for their constitutional liberty, but against the vices of administration, than the reservation of a right so difficult in the practice, so uncertain in the issue, and often so mischievous in the consequences, as that of cashiering their governors.

And in case anyone should misunderstand the power of a king who is not to be removed lightly, Edmund Burke states in the opening of paragraph 45, Kings in one sense are undoubtedly the servants of the people, because their power has no other rational end than that of the general advantage.

In coming to consider the 3rd claim of Dr Price from paragraph 49, Edmund Burke makes clear the difference between the reality of English constitutional history and the assertions about rights made by Dr Price.

In doing so he makes a clear statement as to the fundamental necessity and principle of continuity in preserving our liberty.

We wished at the period of the Revolution, and do now wish, to derive all we possess as an inheritance from our forefathers. All the reformations we have hitherto made, have proceeded upon the principle of reference to antiquity; and I hope, nay I am persuaded, that all those which possibly may be made hereafter, will be carefully formed upon analogical precedent, authority and example. [Paragraph 49]

Our oldest reformation is that of Magna Charta. You will see that Sir Edward Coke, that great oracle of our law, and indeed all the great men who follow him, to Blackstone, are industrious to prove the pedigree of our liberties. [Paragraph 50]

In the famous law of the 3d of Charles I called the Petition of Right, the parliament says to the king, Your subjects have inherited this freedom, claiming their franchises not on abstract principles as the rights of men but as the rights of Englishmen, and as a patrimony derived from their forefathers. [Paragraph 51]

You will observe that from Magna Charta to the Declaration of Right, it has been the uniform policy of our constitution to claim and assert our liberties, as an entailed inheritance derived to us from our forefathers, and to be transmitted to our posterity; as an estate specially belonging to the people of this kingdom without any reference whatever to any other more general or prior right.

By this means our constitution preserves a unity in so great a diversity of its parts. We have an inheritable crown; an inheritable peerage; and a House of Commons and a people inheriting privileges, franchises, and liberties, from a long line of ancestors. [Paragraph 53]

Besides the people of England well know, that the idea of inheritance furnishes

• a sure principle of conservation, and

• a sure principle of transmission;

• without at all excluding a principle of improvement

It leaves acquisition free; but it secures what it acquires. Whatever advantages are obtained by a state proceeding on these maxims, are locked fast as in a sort of family settlement; grasped as in a kind of mortmain forever. By a constitutional policy, working after the pattern of nature, we receive, we hold, we transmit our government and our privileges, in the same manner in which we enjoy and transmit our property and our lives……… the whole, at one time, is never old, or middle aged, or young, but in a condition of unchangeable constancy, moves on through the varied tenour of perpetual decay, fall, renovation, and progression. [Paragraph 54]

Having dealt with these specific claims of Dr Price by outlining the actual history in question, Edmund Burke then says to his French correspondent, [paragraph 56]

You might, if you pleased, have profited of our example, and have given your recovered freedom a correspondent dignity. Your privileges, though discontinued, were not lost to memory. Your constitution it is true, whilst you were out of possession, suffered waste and dilapidation; but you possessed in some parts the walls, and in all the foundations of a noble and venerable castle. You might have repaired the walls; you might have built on those old foundations. Your constitution was suspended before it was perfected; but you had the elements of a constitution very nearly as good as could be wished.

And in paragraph 57 he continues, You had all these advantages in your antient states; but you chose to act as if you had never been moulded into civil society, and had everything to begin anew. You began ill because you began by despising everything that belonged to you. You set up your trade without a capital. If the last generations of your country appeared without much lustre in your eyes, you might have passed them by, and derived your claims from a more early race of ancestors…. ………. Respecting your forefathers, you would have been taught to respect yourselves.

Having suggested to the French that they look to their ancestors for inspiration, Edmund Burke repeats that they should look to England’s example because in England the ancient common law of the European peoples had been preserved. He continues in paragraph 57:

Or if diffident of yourselves and not clearly discerning the almost obliterated constitution of your ancestors, you had looked to your neighbours in this land, who had kept alive the antient principles and models of the old common law of Europe meliorated and adapted to its present state – by following wise examples you would have given new examples of wisdom to the world.

You would have rendered the cause of liberty venerable in the eyes of every worthy mind in every nation.

Instead, [paragraph 58] Burke says that the French listened to Enlightenment thinking and followed false lights whose extravagant and presumptuous speculations … taught your leaders to despise all your predecessors, and all their contemporaries, and even to despise themselves, until the moment in which they became truly despicable.

France when she let loose the reins of regal authority, doubled the licence, of a ferocious dissoluteness in manners, and of an insolent irreligion in opinions and practices, and has extended through all ranks of life, as if she were communicating some privilege, or laying open some secluded benefit, all the unhappy corruptions that usually were the disease of wealth and power. This is one of the new principles of equality in France. [Paragraph 58]

This situation led the French to rebel against a mild and lawful monarch, with more fury, outrage and insult than ever any people has been known to rise against the most illegal usurper, or the most sanguinary tyrant. Their resistance was made to concession; their revolt was from protection; their blow was aimed at a hand holding out graces, favours and immunities. [Paragraph 59]

This was unnatural. The rest is in order. They have found their punishment in their success. [Paragraph 60]

In paragraph 60, Edmund Burke summarises all the evils which flowed from following Enlightenment thinking and rejecting established authority in the hands of a moderate king. In the remainder of his Reflections, Edmund Burke goes on to examine and explain all these catastrophic consequences of the French Revolution in more detail.

Laws overturned; tribunals subverted; industry without vigour; commerce expiring; the revenue unpaid, yet the people impoverished; a church pillaged, and a state not relieved; civil and military anarchy made the constitution of the kingdom; everything human and divine sacrificed to the idol of public credit, and national bankruptcy the consequence; and to crown all, the paper securities of new, precarious, tottering power, the discredited paper securities of impoverished fraud, and beggared rapine, held out as a currency for the support of an empire, in lieu of the two great recognised species that represent the lasting conventional credit of mankind, which disappeared and hid themselves in the earth from whence they came, when the principle of property, whose creatures and representatives they are, was systematically subverted.

But all of this was not the result of some terrible civil war; it had occurred at a time of peace.

The fresh ruins of France …. are not the devastation of civil war; they are the sad but instructive monuments of rash and ignorant counsel in time of profound peace. [Paragraph 61]

The problem was the new thinking among men inexperienced in politics and ill-suited to the task; the concentration of power in the National Assembly; and the lack of opposition or resistance to that power.

In paragraphs 61 to 69 Edmund Burke then discusses the issue of the National Assembly before turning to contrast it with the British House of Commons in paragraphs 70 to 72. The House of Commons is … circumscribed and shut in by the immovable barriers of laws, usages, positive rules of doctrine and practice, counterpoised by the House of Lords, and every moment of its existence at the discretion of the crown to continue, prorogue or dissolve. [Paragraph 71]

In other words, the representatives of the people at large are bounded by constitutional constraints: they operate within a procedural framework. By contrast however, the Assembly in France is unbounded, and therein lies the problem.

That Assembly, since the destruction of the orders, has no fundamental law, no strict convention, no respected usage to restrain it. Instead of finding themselves obliged to conform to a fixed constitution, they have a power to make a constitution which shall conform to their designs. Nothing in heaven or upon earth can serve as a control on them. [Paragraph 71]

It is well worth observing that in this same paragraph where he makes this comparison between the English and French systems, Edmund Burke also makes an anecdotal comment which goes to the heart of his concern for morals and principles in politics and life. He says,

The power of the House of Commons …. is indeed great; and long may it be able to preserve its greatness, …. at the full; and it will do so, as long as it can keep the breakers of law in India from becoming the makers of law for England.

The contemporary problem for Burke was the arrival back in England of the nabobs - men who had often made their fortunes by questionable means in India and the East, and who returned looking for position and power in England.

Edmund Burke had throughout his life been concerned for social justice. When a man like Burke speaks about freedom and constitutional arrangements, he does so out of a deep concern for their part in assuring ordinary people’s rights and freedoms. And this concern manifests itself throughout his Reflections on the Revolution in France.

He makes another revealing comment as he explains the disruption of the French Revolution in paragraph 73. As he pursues his comment on what has gone wrong, he examines the psychology of those who betray their class for gain. He says,

Turbulent, discontented men of quality, in proportion as they are puffed up with personal pride and arrogance, generally despise their own order. One of the first symptoms they discover of a selfish and mischievous ambition is a profligate disregard of a dignity which they partake with others. To be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle (the germ as it were) of public affections. It is the first link in the series by which we proceed toward a love to our country and to mankind. The interest of that portion of social arrangement is a trust in the hands of all those who compose it; and as none but bad men would justify it in abuse, none but traitors would barter it away for their own personal advantage.

For Edmund Burke, identity is vital. Class, origins, family, the local community – these are where we learn to relate