Outline of Lecture

I. Introduction: Conservatism Then and Now
II. The Impact of the French Revolution
III.  Reaction and Conservatism on the Continent
IV. Edmund Burke, Conservative Theorist (1729-1797)
V. Burke's View of the French Revolution
VI. Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)
VII. The Creed of  A Conservative
VIII. Conservatism and the Second Europe

In the 19^th century Conservatism as a political policy had its greatest influence from 1815 to 1848. And it was primarily on continental Europe that this influence was felt. But "conservatism" as a frame of mind, a broad political posture still lives today in the ideas of such American figures as Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan and British spokesmen as Margaret Thatcher. Conservatism, then, had a concrete form as a policy in Europe and as a habit of mind, an attitude toward human nature and proper political and social behavior, and we will touch on both sides in this session.

Conservatism grew directly out of the French Revolution. The Revolution had violently unsettled Europe, shattering the confidence of many influential men in reason and other Enlightenment ideas. A king and queen had been executed; other monarchs had been unseated in all parts of the continent where the Revolution or Napoleon had prevailed. Traditional society had been overturned. Religion had been uprooted. Republican ideas had been loosed and the peoples of Europe were caught up by them. Men in power after Napoleon's defeat and exile in 1815 were horrified at what had been done from 1790 to 1815 and after 1815 a reaction set in.

At the Congress of Vienna (1814-1815) the leaders of Europe drew up plans that would, in so far as possible, restore the status quo ante, before the Revolution had begun. The major figure in this reactionary turn was Prince Klemens von Metternich (1773-1859), Austrian Foreign Minister, who as a young man had been horrified by the excesses of the Revolution. To him the Revolution had been "the gangrene which must be burned out with the hot iron, the hydra with jaws open to swallow up the social order." To prevent another outbreak of revolution and repress the forces of nationalism and republicanism Metternich and his colleagues drew up a comprehensive international system called the Congress System. Under this plan the major powers--Great Austria, Britain, Russia, and Prussia--agreed to meet in a series of "congresses" to consult and cooperate in putting down revolutionary movements and preserving the status quo. The teeth to the Congress System was an alliance joining these powers called the Quadruple Alliance. The balance of power was restored. France was ringed by buffer states and forced to pay reparations for damages caused by the revolutionary era. In 1818 France was reinstated among the great powers (the Quintuple Alliance when France joined). Wherever possible, the old ruling families deposed by the Revolution and Napoleon were returned to their thrones, including France (Louis XVIII, Louis XVI's brother), Spain and Italy.

Although the Congress System broke down when Britain refused to support an intervention in Spain in 1822, fearing that it might be extended to Spain's revolting colonies in South America, the purpose of the System endured until 1830 when a new wave of revolutions broke out. Counter-revolution was the order of the day during the conservative reaction. Conservative ideas which had been taken for granted before were now formulated and offered as a rationale for repression. And this brings us to Edmund Burke who was one of the most important apologists for conservatism.
 
 

Who was Edmund Burke, and why did his ideas lend themselves to the conservative reaction in Europe? Burke was an Irishman, the son of a Dublin attorney. Born in 1727 and educated in Ireland, he moved to England to study the law, but abandoned it for literature and politics. He published works whose style called attention to his gift for writing and got him employment as secretary to a leading Whig politician of the period, the Marquis of Rockingham and a seat in Parliament. He served 20 years and became known as one of the most eloquent speakers of the era. His reputation for learning was prodigious. Samuel Johnson, head of a circle of leading political, artistic, and literary figures called "the Club" which met at the Turk's Head in Soho, London and included a Who's Who of British society (Joshua Reynolds, Adam Smith, Edward Gibbon, Oliver Goldsmith, and Burke) said of him: "you could not stand five minutes with that man beneath a shed while it rained, but you must be convinced you had been standing with the greatest man you had ever yet seen." At his death, Burke was buried in the parish church of St Mary and All Saints Church, Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire.

Burke's prominence as a conservative spokesman seems paradoxical. He was a Whig which made him something of a conservative in 18^th century England, but Whiggism itself was a revolutionary creed. And he had on several occasions before his Reflection on the Revolution in France taken seemingly liberal stands. On the question of the American Revolution, he was decidedly pro-colonist. He denounced the government's policy towards the American colonies in very heated terms, calling it incompetent, bungling, stupid, unjust, and oppressive. He wanted the government to reconcile its differences with the colonists. When revolution broke out, he still supported the American cause. But his reason for supporting the American Revolution was that it tried to preserve the best of the past in a new government: it reaffirmed the revolutionary tradition of 1688 instead of violently repudiating the past. This takes us to his view of the French Revolution which he decided had taken a different course.
 
 

When the Revolution erupted in 1789, Burke was near the end of his life (d.1797). His last years were full of personal disappointments. This may have colored his view of events in France from 1789-91. For whatever reason, however, he was alarmed by what was happening in France and feared repercussions in England and throughout Europe. To Burke the revolution was more than an internal French matter. He feared it would overturn civilization itself. The liberty proclaimed by the revolutionaries seemed to him a caricature of freedom. It was license and anarchy, not real freedom and would lead to tyranny. So he reacted quickly and took on the task of repudiating the French Revolution.
 
 

The work purports to have been written in October, 1789 as a letter to a young man in Paris who has asked Burke for his opinion. It is some letter, 365 pages long. So popular was it that it went through 11 editions in the first year alone. The thesis of Reflections is that no matter how noble the aims of the Revolution, disaster is the only possible outcome of a violent overthrow of existing institutions and age-old traditions by idealists without political experience. By the time of his death in 1797 events had pretty much confirmed his dire prediction of tyranny. The Directory was in power and was implementing a reaction to the Reign of Terror. Napoleon was just over the horizon.

Very quickly, Burke states his doubts about the French Revolution's great aims. Liberty, he says, is worthless as an idea unless it is combined with practical circumstances which truly make liberty possible: a stable government, peace and order in society, and traditional morality and religion. Without the practical circumstances liberty will not last long. The discussion then turns to the English constitutional example, because there liberty over a long, slow, continuous process has been married to solid institutional circumstances to produce real freedom. The process has been so slow that change and development have happened almost imperceptibly. "The very idea of the fabrication of a new government is enough to fill us with disgust and horror. We wished and do now wish to derive all we possess as an inheritance from our forefathers." England's constitutional development has been patterned after nature's own process:

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 institutions of policy, the goods of fortune, the gifts of providence are handed down to us, and from us, in the same course and order. Our political system is placed in a just correspondence and symmetry with the order of the world and with the mode of existence decreed to a permanent body composed of transitory parts, wherein, by the disposition of a stupendous wisdom, molding together the great mysterious incorporation of the human race, 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 tenor of perpetual decay, fall, renovation, and progression. Thus, by preserving the method of nature in the conduct of the state, in what we improve we are never wholly new; in what we retain we are never wholly obsolete.

Burke's view of the Revolution was shaped by his view of human nature. He had grave doubts about the fundamental tenets of the Enlightenment, the Second Europe, particularly the belief in the rationality and goodness of man. For Burke, as for Niccolo Machiavelli, man is a complex being, as is the world in which he lives. Multiple, unforeseen and unforeseeable factors condition even the simplest event, not to mention great events like the French Revolution. So it is impossible to predict what the outcome of even the simplest act will be, because human intelligence is too limited for man to have any certainty about his actions. Burke questioned the basic proposition that man was capable of being the rational creature he was said to be.

Is man reasonable? Yes, but not so reasonable as the optimists said. He is not chiefly intellect. Instead, he is a mixture primarily of "passion," "prejudice," and "habit," with a small dose of intellect thrown in. He believes what he believes and behaves the way he behaves because of customs and habits built up over countless generations. Because of this there is a disparity between the world and man as seen by reason and by experience. Seen by reason, the world and man are simple, logical, and orderly; seen by experience, both are complex, often illogical, and only apparently orderly. Man distorts reality when he thinks that it is truly revealed by reason, when experience is the best point of view.

If man is essentially a creature of passion, prejudice, and habit, what is the best society for him? Any society which is long-established, working and to which his passions, prejudices, and habits have become accustomed. The old, the established and the traditional may not be ideal, but they are far better and more reliable than anything which might suddenly be put in their place. In the case of France, the passions, prejudices and habits had come over the centuries to rest on the monarchy and old order. When monarchy and the old order were removed, in the misguided and foolish attempt to make improvements, there was nothing to fall back on except force and terror. So Burke opposed the Revolution because it stripped away a working society and political structure and left nothing with which old passions, prejudices, and habits could identify.

In Reflection Burke was assuming an organic view of society i.e., that society is an interdependent, continuing organism, not a mere collection of individuals. He specifically rejected the idea of the contract as a rational act by free men to create society for their mutual and individual benefit. "Society is indeed a contract," he said. But more than that, he continued, it is "a partnership not only between those who are living, but those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born." This explains why Burke had a reverence for the customary and traditional akin to religious reverence. The members of society's body are held together as parts which have grown together and share a common life. As the growth of the body can be assisted in small ways by treating disease with specific remedies, so society's ills may be relieved by limited reforms. But radical treatment may kill both the body and society. The focus in the organic view is on the whole, not the individual part, as the greater, more important entity. As part of society, the individual has a small stock of reason, but society, as the accumulation of wisdom over centuries, has a much greater store. By slow accretion over centuries society has accumulated in its institutions, laws, and traditions an immense repository of wisdom on which the individual can draw. This repository means the difference between savagery and civilization. Without it, man is a barbarian. With it, he has access to civilization, freedom from his passions and prejudices, and real liberty.

Burke challenged the most basic tenets of the Enlightenment. "Skeptical" might be the best word to use when characterizing his view of the goodness and rationality of man. I think he would also demur about man's capacity to understand and dominate the order of the world. Remember the law of unintended consequences? "Natural Rights" are worthless as only abstract rights; rights mean something only if grounded in actual circumstances making liberty possible. He would also disagree with the usual Enlightenment interpretation of the contract as a rational act by men seeking protection of their rights. And he would reject the optimism with which Enlightenment men viewed the future. No bright vision of the future for him, particularly if men were determined to destroy the past to get there. With all conservatives, he would say that society can never be ideal because the world is complex and cannot be dominated by human wisdom. Man must make the best of what he has because this is the best that is likely to be. He must start with the world of experience, not the world as viewed by reason and logic. Even with the best intentions and intelligence available, man cannot create the world over in the image of reason and logic. What change is possible, if any? Only that which preserves as much of the old as possible. If reform must come, let it be evolutionary, slow, and then only as a last resort.