Edmund Burke: Reflections on the Revolution in France

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

In the extract Burke outlines and staunchly defends the principle of hereditary succession to the English throne, emphasizing the role played by the English Revolution of 1688 in confirming this principle through lineal descent and statute law. This controversial interpretation challenged many political reformers, such as the Dissenting Minister Richard Price, who argued that the monarch of England required popular consent to rule as a servant of the people—the very consent that William of Orange had gained through Parliament prior to his joint enthronement with Queen Mary.

By contrast, in Reflections, Burke argues that the accession of William of Orange to the throne, though it represented “a small and a temporary deviation” from the direct hereditary line, was nevertheless a succession “derived from the same stock”—“hereditary descent qualified with Protestantism.” Nowhere in the process, Burke contended, had the English people exercised a determining will or been required to give their consent. The lead-up to the English Revolution was, he suggested, a moment of great emergency, a litmus test on the constitutional footing of the monarchy. The passive acceptance by the public of William of Orange as joint sovereign confirmed in perpetuity the binding nature of hereditary royal succession.

According to Burke, not only had the deeds of the English Revolution and the acquiescence of the people confirmed this principle, but it also had a legal basis, enshrined by statute in the form of the “Declaration of Right,” which confirmed a Protestant line of succession. Layering his argument still further but moving into his own century, Burke also suggests that the public acceptance of the Hanoverian line commencing with George I, despite all the “dangers and inconveniences” of a foreign monarch, had straightened what had been a brief but necessary hereditary deviation, by reestablishing a direct descent to James I, albeit through the female line.

Hereditary succession was necessary according to Burke, because it was the only way to provide political and social stability, which in turn generated wealth and happiness. Throughout Reflections but particularly in the extract, Burke is careful to draw a distinction between the concept of the hereditary right of succession by statute law and the “divine heredity and indefeasible right” claimed by monarchs in the past, most notably Charles I. Burke therefore positioned himself as a moderate between two poles: the excesses of absolute monarchy associated with Louis XVI in France and the “new fanatics,” English political radicals who claimed that “popular election is the sole lawful source of authority.”

In addition to defending hereditary monarchy, Burke also addressed the issue raised by Price of whether the people had a right to “cashier” or rebuke their governors or rulers for misconduct, while attacking his assertion that the king should consider himself “more properly the servant than the sovereign of his people.” In Burke's view, this analogy was as pernicious as it was false, for the king was in no way subservient to his people, could not be dismissed, and had the right to be obeyed. However, several pieces of legislation that had been passed under William and Mary already safeguarded the rights and liberties of subjects from arbitrary Crown rule, providing that “no pardon under the great seal of England should be pleadable to an impeachment by the Commons in parliament.”

Burke's position in Reflections on the Revolution in France consists of a delicate and, some argue, contradictory balance between constitutional continuity and healthy correction. It hinges on the separation of the person of the monarch from the institution of the monarchy, for while a king could abdicate or forsake his crown in absentia as James II had done, the monarchy per se would continue in perpetuity. Burke's conservative sentiments in favour of hereditary monarchy and his antagonism toward the French Revolution—“the newest Paris Fashion of an improved liberty,” as he sarcastically writes—surprised many contemporaries who remembered his progressive support for the American revolutionaries. However, his defection from the opposition to the government immediately prior to the writing of Reflections may well partly explain this political shift.