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The Theory of the State: Edmund Burke

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Robert M. Hutchins
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Extract

No Statesman ever insisted more often or more stoutly that he was a practical man than Edmund Burke. On almost every page of his writings he proclaims his distaste for theory and abstraction. But he could seldom leave a question without a fling at the theory of it. This was unfortunate, for his theoretical efforts, though often dazzling, were rarely convincing. The examination of the body of his doctrine on any subject, taken as a whole, is likely to leave the reader echoing the sentiments of Mr. Pitt, who said after looking through one of Burke's publications that it was like other rhapsodies from the same pen: he found in it much to admire and nothing to agree with.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , April 1943 , pp. 139 - 155
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1943

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References

1 See e.g. On the Repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, 1790, Speeches, (London, 1816) III, 475Google Scholar: “Abstract principles, as his right honourable friend (Fox) well knew, he (Burke) disliked, and never could bear; he detested them when a boy, and he liked them no better now he had silver hairs.” Cf. Observations on a Late State of the Nation, 1769, Works, (London, 1803) II, 9, 33Google Scholar: “Cases are dead things, principles are living and productive”; Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents, 1770, Works II, 217, 335Google Scholar: “It is the business of the speculative philosopher to mark the proper ends of government. It is the business of the politician, who is the philosopher in action, to find out proper means towards those ends, and to employ them with effect.”

2 The Journal and Correspondence of William, Lord Auckland, (London, 1862) III, 320Google Scholar.

3 Canada might be added to this list as a slight but instructive example. Cf. Burke's, attitude in 1774 in the debates on the Quebec Bill, Cavendish Debates, (London, 1839)Google Scholar with his attitude in the debates on the Quebec Bill of 1791, Speeches IV, 5 et seq. In the former, p. 222, he says, “The noble lord has told you of the right of those people by the treaty; but I consider the right of conquest so little, and the right of human nature so much, that the former has very little consideration with me.” In 1791 he said, p. 5: “A body of rights, commonly called the Rights of Man, imported from a neighboring country, had been lately set up by some persons in this, as paramount to all other rights. A principal article in this new code was, ‘That all men are by nature free, are equal in respect of rights, and continue so in society.’ If such a doctrine were to be admitted, then the power of the House could extend no farther than to call together all the inhabitants of Canada and recommend to them the free choice of a constitution for themselves. On what, then was this House to found its competence? There was another code on which mankind in all ages had acted—the law of nations; and on this alone he (Burke) conceived the competence of the House to rest. This country had acquired the power of legislating for Canada by right of conquest; and in virtue of that right, all the rights and duties of the old government had devolved on us. In the second place, came the right by the cession of the old government and in the third, the right of possession, which we had held for about thirty years. All these, according to the law of nations, enabled us to legislate for the people of Canada, and bound us to afford them an equitable government, and them to allegiance.”

4 Works, (Bohn, ed. London, 1894) VIGoogle Scholar.

5 Cf. the letter from Edmund to John Burke written in 1777, Memoirs of Sir Philip Francis, (Merivale, ed. London, 1867) II, 126Google Scholar: “I am, for one, entirely satisfied that the inequality, which grows out of the nature of things, by time, custom, successions, accumulation, permutation, and improvement of property, is much nearer that true equality, which is the foundation of equity and just policy, than anything which can be contrived by the tricks and devices of human skill. What does it amount to, after some little jumbling, but that some men have better estates than others? I am certain that when the financial system is but tolerable planned it will catch property in spite of all its doublings; and sooner or later those who have most will pay most, and there is the effective equality which circumstances will bring about of themselves if they are left to their own operation.” In this letter Burke makes the cryptic remark that “it is this very rage for equality which has blown up the flame of this present cursed war in America.”

6 Works, (Bohn, ed.) V, 491Google Scholar, 504–505.

7 On American Taxation. 1774. Speeches I, 178Google Scholar, 236.

8 On Conciliation with the Colonies, 1775, Speeches I. 327Google Scholar.

9 Works, (Bohn, ed.) V. 460Google Scholar. 473.

10 On Mr. Fox's East India Bill, 1783, Speeches II, 411Google Scholar.

11 Ibid. 413.

12 Ibid. 408.

13 Impeachment of Warren Hastings, 1788, Speeches IV, 353Google Scholar.

14 Ibid. 357.

15 Ibid., 1794, 477. The peroration is at p. 511: “My lords, it is not the criminality of the prisoner—it is not the claims of the Commons to demand judgment to be passed upon him—it is not the honor and dignity of this court, and the welfare of millions of the human race, that alone call upon you:—when the devouring flames shall have destroyed this perishable globe, and it sinks into the abyss of nature, from whence it was commanded into existence by the Great Author of it—then, my lords, when all nature, kings and judges themselves, must answer for their actions, there will be found what supersedes creation itself, namely. Eternal Justice. It was the attribute of the Great God of Nature before worlds were; it will reside with him when they perish; and the earthly portion of it committed to your care, is now solemnly deposited in your hands by the Commons of England. My lords, I have done.”

16 Supra, Note 1, 224.

17 1772, Speeches I, 94, 110.

18 1777, Works III, 170.

19 It must follow from this either that the French Revolution was not general or that it was provoked. Burke, quite unjustifiably, chose the former alternative.

20 See especially A Letter to a Member of the National Assembly, 1791, Works VI, 23 and 26Google Scholar.

21 Letters on a Regicide Peace, 1796, Works VIII, 79Google Scholar, 184.

22 Reflections on the Revolution in France, 1790, Works V, 73Google Scholar.

23 Ibid. 127. Cf. On the Traitorous Correspondence Bill, 1793, Speeches IV, 136Google Scholar.

24 Cf. the remark in the speech On Mr. Fox's Motion for the Repeal of Certain Statutes Respecting Religious Opinions, 1792, Speeches IV, 58Google Scholar, that it is the feelings of the people and not theories of their rights which are the best guide for the policy of government.

25 Reflections on the Revolution in France, supra, note 22, 283–284.

26 Ibid. 277.

27 Letter to M. Dupont, 1789. Corr. (Fitzwilliam, ed. London, 1844) III, 102Google Scholar, 117.

28 Reflections on the Revolution in France, supra, note 22, 161.

29 120–121.

30 Ibid. 123.

31 On property and education see Hutchins, , “The Theory of Oligarchy: Edmund Burke,” The Thomist, Maritain volume, 01, 1943, 61Google Scholar.

32 Reflections on the Revolution in France, supra, note 22, 121–122: “If civil society be the offspring of convention, that convention must be its law. That convention must limit and modify all the descriptions of constitution which are formed under it. Every sort of legislature, judicial, or executory power are its creatures. They can have no being in any other state of things.…”

33 An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs, 1791, Works, VI, 210–211Google Scholar.

34 Ibid. 211.

35 Cf. On Conciliation with the Colonies, supra, note 8, 304: “.… if I were sure the colonists had, at their leaving this country, sealed a regular compact of servitude; that they had solemnly abjured all the rights of citizens; that they had made a vow to renounce all ideas of liberty for them and their posterity, to all generations, yet I should hold myself obliged to conform to the temper I found universally prevalent in my own day, and to govern two million of men, impatient of servitude, on the principles of freedom.”

36 On these points see Hutchins, op. cit., supra, note 31.

37 Reflections on the Revolution in France, supra, note 22, 122.

38 Observations on the Conduct of the Minority, 1793, Works VII, 219Google Scholar, 271: “Before society, in a multitude of men, it is obvious, that sovereignty and subjection are ideas which cannot exist. It is the compact on which society is formed that makes both. But to suppose the people, contrary to their compacts, both to give away and retain the same thing, is altogether absurd. It is worse, for it supposed in any strong combination of men a power and a right of always dissolving the social union; which power, however, if it exists, renders them again as little sovereigns as subjects, but a mere unconnected multitude.”

39 Reflections on the Revolution in France, supra, note 22, 183–184: “Society is indeed a contract. Subordinate contracts for the objects of mere occasional interest may be dissolved at pleasure—but the state ought not to be considered as nothing better than a partnership agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee, callico or tobacco, or some other such low concern, to be taken up for a little temporary interest, and to be dissolved by the fancy of the parties. It is to be looked on with other reverence; because it is not a partnership subservient only to the gross animal existence of a temporary and perishable nature. It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership can not be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.”

40 On Mr. Sheridan's Motion Relative to the Existence of Seditious Practices, 1793, Speeches IV, 126Google Scholar.

41 On the Alien Bill. 1792, Speeches IV, 93Google Scholar.

42 An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs, supra, note 33, 205.

43 Reflections on the Revolution in France, supra, note 22, 184–185.

44 An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs, supra, note 33, 213, 214.

45 Reflections on the Revolution in France, supra, note 22, 298: “If they had set up this new experimental government, as a necessary substitute for an expelled tyranny, mankind would anticipate the time of prescription, which, through long usage, mellows into legality governments that were violent in their commencement. All those who have affections which lead them to the conservation of civil order would recognize, even in its cradle, the child as legitimate, which has been produced from those principles of cogent expediency to which all just governments owe their birth, and on which they justify their continuance.”

46 An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs, supra, note 33, 211–212. Cf. On the Motion for an Enquiry into the Administration of Criminal Justice, 1770, Speeches I, 67, 70Google Scholar: “By what rule, then, does the majority of this House square its conduct, when it acts in direct opposition to the majority of the people? By that rule of arithmetic, which by its almighty fiat overturned the laws of nature, decreed 296 to be greater than 1146, gave us Colonel Luttrell for John Wilkes, a cuckoo in a magpye's nest to suck its eggs.”

47 An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs, supra, note 33, 228–229.

48 Reflections on the Revolution in France, supra, note 22, 121.

49 A Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe, M.P., 1792, Works VI, 299Google Scholar, 359.

50 On the Stale of Ireland, Corr. IV., 65, 81–82. Cf., in the discussion of America, Corr. IV, 494: “It is not an arbitrary value that is set on a franchise. It is the share that every man has in the government of his country. The form of a constitution under which a man lives is generally one of the dearest objects to him. Oceans of blood have been shed in this country, in other countries, and in all times, upon the form of government only. What were almost all the wars in all the cities of Greece, but on the quantity of democratic power which ought to be in each constitution?”

51 On the Slate of Ireland, supra, note 50, 67.

52 Ibid. 78–81; see also On Mr. Fox's Amendments to the Address on the King's Speech, 1792, Speeches IV, 80Google Scholar.

53 On the Quebec Government Bill, supra, note 3, 25; An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs, supra, note 33, 121–123. Cf. Macaulay, , Mirabeau, Works (London, 1879) V, 612, 621–622Google Scholar: “When Mr. Burke was reminded in his later years of the zeal which he had displayed in the cause of the Americans, he vindicated himself from the charge of inconsistency, by contrasting the wisdom and moderation of the Colonial insurgents of 1776 with the fanaticism and wickedness of the Jacobins of 1792. He was in fact bringing an argument a fortiori against himself. The circumstances on which he rested his vindication fully proved that the old government of France stood in far more need of a complete change than the old government of America.”

54 On Franklin, Jefferson, and Wilson, see Adams, , Political Ideas of the American Revolution, (Durham, 1922)Google Scholar Chapter II. On the whole subject see Schuyler, , Parliament and the British Empire, (New York, 1929)Google Scholar.

55 See Fisher, , “The Legendary and Myth-Making Process in Histories of the American Revolution,” 1912, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, LI, 53Google Scholar, 58.

56 English Whiggism and the American Revolution, (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1942)Google Scholar.

57 “If the right was ascertained, and we thought coercion prudent, the repeal would be absurd; if not, the declaration of right would be a mere impotent bravado. If the complaints of America were well grounded, then it would have been just and wise to renounce the exercise of an unjust power. Here was the maintenance of an obnoxious speculative principle, with the abandonment of practical benefit, for which only it could deserve support. The declaratory law tended to counteract, in America, the effect of the repeal. The measures of the Rockingham Administration were esteemed the result of good intentions, but of feeble and short-sighted policy.” Bisset, , The Life of Edmund Burke, (London, 1798) 76–77Google Scholar.