Reflections on the Revolution in France

A long open letter to a young French correspondent, attacking the French Revolution in its first year and its English admirers, above all the dissenting minister Richard Price. Burke denies that the English settlement of 1688 gave the people a right to choose and dismiss their rulers; English liberties are an inheritance, passed down like an entailed estate. Society, he argues, is a partnership between the living, the dead and those yet to be born, and inherited institutions, even 'prejudice', carry a practical wisdom that no single generation can replace by reasoning from abstract rights. Real rights are the concrete advantages of civil society, not metaphysical claims. He predicts that the Revolution will slide into disorder and military rule, laments the treatment of Marie Antoinette, and criticises the seizure of church property and the new paper money. Read as a founding text of modern conservatism, it was answered at once by Mary Wollstonecraft and Thomas Paine, who accused Burke of defending privilege.

It is the classic statement of conservative political thought, and its warnings about abstract schemes, revolution and the value of inherited institutions are still invoked and disputed.