Dear H.G:

I like your question a lot. Not only, because my first, minor doctoral degree dissertation was on him and Acton and the French Revolution, but also because I find him as indeed a key exponent of some of the most important themes of modern Birtish style conservatism. 

As for his view on rights: I think his argument in favour of political rights as opposed to natural rights is sound enough. Let us see, how he does it:

1." In the famous law of the 3rd 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. Selden and the other profoundly learned men who drew this Petition of Right were as well acquainted, at least, with all the general theories concerning the "rights of men" as any of the discoursers in our pulpits or on your tribune; full as well as Dr. Price or as the Abbe Sieyes. But, for reasons worthy of that practical wisdom which superseded their theoretic science, they preferred this positive, recorded, hereditary title to all which can be dear to the man and the citizen, to that vague speculative right which exposed their sure inheritance to be scrambled for and torn to pieces by every wild, litigious spirit."

2. as the liberties and the restrictions vary with times and circumstances and admit to infinite modifications, they cannot be settled upon any abstract rule; and nothing is so foolish as to discuss them upon that principle.

and

3. These metaphysic rights entering into common life, like rays of light which pierce into a dense medium, are by the laws of nature refracted from their straight line. Indeed, in the gross and complicated mass of human passions and concerns the primitive rights of men undergo such a variety of refractions and reflections that it becomes absurd to talk of them as if they continued in the simplicity of their original direction.

Certainly, these ideas are far away from the jurisdictioun of courts today, which look at rights as a part of the law. Yet I guess that this, in turn, contributes to the politicisation of the courts, and the legalisation of political ideology.

Best,

Ferenc

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Ferenc,

I thought this question might interest you.

But you will have noticed that O'Neill has it, in her talk, that Burke is a defender of human rights, and that sets her problem or tension in Burke, between his defending rights in some cases and apparently discounting them in others. True, he discounts "abstract rights" and "metaphysical speculations" applied to policy decisions. But he defends his alternative conception. I thought O'Neill pretty persuasive in her talk.

Though as you have it, quoting Burke, I think, "liberties and the restrictions vary with times and circumstances and admit to infinite modifications," this might be taken as a very long view of human history, and not a description of the constitutional order which Burke defends, dating from the Glorious Revolution. Henry VIII, e.g., took many "liberties" and applied "restrictions" which Burke thought despotic. 

Interesting that you point to or allege "politicization of the courts" and "legalization of political ideology." This definitely sounds like something that Burke would have opposed. I think of the abolition of the notorious "Star Chamber," for instance. Might you expand on this theme at bit?

What are the sources of your quotations? Knowing that might be helpful.

Thanks for your thoughtful response.

H.G. Callaway

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Ferenc,

Here is one of your passages from Burke, quoted above, in fuller context:

Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. Men have a right that these wants should be provided for by this wisdom. Among these wants is to be reckoned the want, out of civil society, of a sufficient restraint upon their passions. Society requires not only that the passions of individuals should be subjected, but that even in the mass and body as well as in the individuals, the inclinations of men should frequently be thwarted, their will controlled, and their passions brought into subjection. This can only be done by a power out of themselves; and not, in the exercise of its function, subject to that will and to those passions which it is its office to bridle and subdue. In this sense the restraints on men, as well as their liberties, are to be reckoned among their rights. But as the liberties and the restrictions vary with times and circumstances, and admit of infinite modifications, they cannot be settled upon any abstract rule; and nothing is so foolish as to discuss them upon that principle. (Reflections, p. 151[110-11])

---end quotation

May we understand this as a defense of the old order of the French monarchy, or its absolutism? Or, is this to be taken, more modestly as a matter of "restraint" on passions, as contrasted with suppression of rational interests? One might consider crime and punishment here, but if so what are the limits? The passage as a whole strikes me as vague. It would seem that this is no definition of "government," since many other institutions may also count as "contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants." We may wonder about their limits, too--even a business, a university, etc., etc.

This is surely intended as an objection to "abstract rule," and a doctrine of abstract rights may come to mind, though the scope of what is allowed as an alternative seems not to be defined. Yet, this, in a sense is the very question of the value of the French Revolution on Burke's account. What degree or kind of despotism is to be preferred to the rule of abstract principle? One might think to compare Burke on the English Civil Wars of the 1640s.

Any comments on the passage regarding your use of it? Does it really clarify Burke on "rights?"

H.G. Callaway

 Burke's first public condemnation of the Revolution occurred on the debate in Parliament on the army estimates on 9 February 1790, provoked by praise of the Revolution by Pitt and Fox:

''Since the House had been prorogued in the summer much work was done in France. The French had shewn themselves the ablest architects of ruin that had hitherto existed in the world. In that very short space of time they had completely pulled down to the ground, their monarchy; their church; their nobility; their law; their revenue; their army; their navy; their commerce; their arts; and their manufactures...[there was a danger of] an imitation of the excesses of an irrational, unprincipled, proscribing, confiscating, plundering, ferocious, bloody and tyrannical democracy...[in religion] the danger of their example is no longer from intolerance, but from Atheism; a foul, unnatural vice, foe to all the dignity and consolation of mankind; which seems in France, for a long time, to have been embodied into a faction, accredited, and almost avowed.''

In January 1790, Burke read Dr. Richard Price's sermon of 4 November 1789 entitled, A Discourse on the Love of our Country, to the Revolution Society.[77] That society had been founded to commemorate the Glorious Revolution of 1688. In this sermon Price espoused the philosophy of universal "Rights of Men". Price argued that love of our country "does not imply any conviction of the superior value of it to other countries, or any particular preference of its laws and constitution of government".[78] Instead, Price asserted that Englishmen should see themselves "more as citizens of the world than as members of any particular community".

Immediately after reading Price's sermon, Burke wrote a draft of what eventually became, Reflections on the Revolution in France.

What the Glorious Revolution had meant was as important to Burke and his contemporaries as it had been for the last one hundred years in British politics.[84] In the Reflections, Burke argued against Price's interpretation of the Glorious Revolution and instead, gave a classic Whig defence of it.[85] Burke argued against the idea of abstract, metaphysical rights of humans and instead advocated national tradition:

''The Revolution was made to preserve our antient indisputable laws and liberties, and that antient constitution of government which is our only security for law and liberty.... The very idea of the fabrication of a new government, is enough to fill us with disgust and horror. We wished at the period of the Revolution, and do now wish, to derive all we possess as an inheritance from our forefathers. Upon that body and stock of inheritance we have taken care not to inoculate any cyon [scion] alien to the nature of the original plant.... 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. They endeavour to prove that the ancient charter... were nothing more than a re-affirmance of the still more ancient standing law of the kingdom.... In the famous law... 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.''

Burke put forward that "We fear God, we look up with awe to kings; with affection to parliaments; with duty to magistrates; with reverence to priests; and with respect to nobility. Why? Because when such ideas are brought before our minds, it is natural to be so affected".[87] Burke defended this prejudice on the grounds that it is "the general bank and capital of nations, and of ages" and superior to individual reason, which is small in comparison.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Burke

===============

I see here an appeal to tradition built-in in history as a source of wisdom superior to universal reason with no historical roots.  Herder made such  appeal.  Vico made such appeal against Descartes's type of desimbodied reason.  This is the judeo-christian historical wisdom against the rationalistic reason , a tabula-rasa un-historical revolutionary refondation of society. 

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Brassard,

I like your little summary at the end of the posting, though it is not exactly clear in what degree you want to endorse such a view.  It is perhaps worth mentioning in this connection that the American founders generally reacted negatively to Burke's critique of the French Revolution--especially at first. They tended to see the success of the French Revolution as a confirmation of their own Revolution, though criticism eventually would center on the failure to establish a stable settlement--comparable to the U.S. constitution of 1789. The English or British constitution which Burke defended, against the influence of French ideas and ideals, they thought of as a kind of halfway house into which America might fall back if the French Revolution were to fail.

Certainly, Burke is a critic of the rationalism of the French Enlightenment and a critic of the radical vehemence of the French Revolution. Meaningful reform, we might say, required a persistence of order. You can't change everything at once; and from this perspective it is often said that the American Revolution was more conservative. Still, French absolutism had been the common enemy of both Britain and America, especially during the Seven Years' War, and the Revolution aimed to eliminate that ancient system. How could Burke, the advocate of English liberty, also defend the ancient order of France, King and aristocracy, church & etc., "awe to kings; with affection to parliaments; with duty to magistrates; with reverence to priests; and with respect to nobility." It may have been "natural" to Burke " to be so affected," but the American founders generally, were not so affected. The new constitution would forbid granting titles of nobility. A Bill of Rights was immediately added to the new American constitution, as though to say that the tradition rights were not already included in the body of the document. How is this different from the French Declaration of rights? (Jefferson, by the way, was in Paris at the time and participated in drafting the Declaration of Rights.)

We still seem to have the familiar tension between Burke on the American crisis and Burke on the French Revolution. Some say he changed his mind.

H.G. Callaway

Dear H.G. Callaway,

Buke's attack to the French revolution would not apply to the American one.  The American did not brought down a local monarch or got rid of one, they did not close churches and started anti-religious campaign, did not involve the wrath of angry crouds against aristocratic elites, did not reject local traditions; they simply politically separated from the British Empire , kept their traditions, and instituted a number of new institutions etc. They did not demolish, they mostly construct and did not undermine the traditional religious basis of morality.  All that was abolish in the French revolution.  The american revolution was more a reform of the UK system of government and not so much a revolution.  Republican France is not all of France as Republican america is. France republican is passionatly and agressively secular.   France was not united with itself , not before the revolution, nor after, not even today.  

I do not think that Burke was defending an absolute monarchy nor an aristocracy with outrageous privileges.  He  would probably have wished a French revolution similar to the Glorious Revolution  and the transformation of  the French aristocracy and monarchy into a modern one like in England and in order to preserve the continuity of traditions.  About the bill of Rights, the French republic and the american republic are similar.  

The opposition of Burke to the French revolution has less to do with this specific aspect than with what I said above.  

The spirit of the philosophers of the Enlightments was anti-historical and anti-tradition. The concept of universal is a denied for locality and historical social construction.  Simply look at the historical spirit of the british law system where precedence is taken into account and is intrincally both traditional and evolutive.  While the Napoleonic code try to be permanent like the spirit of the enlightment. The Enlightment proclaim progress but denied tradition while we need both.  Humans are not universal and the same everywhere.  THey are not borned with natural rights.  They are born with the rights the tradition into which they are borned provide them. It is why that tradition cannot be arbitrary abolished.

Regards

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Brassard,

I suspect you are making this all a bit too easy on yourself. 

You wrote:

I do not think that Burke was defending an absolute monarchy nor an aristocracy with outrageous privileges.

---end quotation.

But compare what Burke actually wrote about the Queen of France in his Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)  Its a justly famous passage, and rather than suggesting reverence for the limitations imposed on monarchy in the English Glorious Revolution 0f 1688-89, Burke suggests simple, passive awe of the French Queen:

It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen

of France, then the dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely

never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to

touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above

the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere

she just began to move in, glittering like the morningstar,

full of life, and splendour, and joy. Oh ! what a

revolution ! and what a heart must I have to contemplate

without emotion that elevation and that fall ! Little did

I dream when she added titles of veneration to those of

enthusiastic, distant, respectful love, that she should ever

be obliged to carry the sharp antidote against disgrace

concealed in that bosom; little did I dream that I should

have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her in a nation

of gallant men, In a nation of men of honour, and of

cavaliers. I thought ten thousand swords must have

leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that

threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is

gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators,

has succeeded ; and the glory of Europe is extinguished

for ever. Never, never more shall we behold that

generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission,

that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart,

which kept alive, even in servitude Itself, the spirit of an

exalted freedom. The unbought grace of life, the cheap

defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and

heroic enterprise, is gone ! It is gone, that sensibility of

principle, that chastity of honour, which felt a stain like a

wound, which inspired courage whilst it mitigated ferocity,

which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice

itself lost half its evil, by losing all its grossness.

---end quotation.

Here it seems that the rights of the ordinary French, and concern for the impoverished circumstances under which they lived takes second place to Burke's reverence and awe before the glory and splendor, the personal virtues or comportment and beautiful figure of the Queen. But surely, the revolutionaries thought that a decent life for the nation was not possible, consistent with the preservation of this monarchical splendor.

There is a conflict here. We cannot quite imagine Burke expressing quite the same admiration for grandeur in a Queen to Henry VIII, say or Charles I, or James II. Were not the French in a better position to judge how they could possibly deal with royal absolutism?  According to Burke, the Americans could well resist taxation from London or become independent, the Irish should have their Catholicism or the religion of their choice, and Britain needed to respect the indigenous civilization of India, but the French were not to make their own decisions? How are we to understand this, especially when it involves Burke going over to the Tories in his late career, rejecting his friends among the Whigs, and calling for war against French radicalism?

While it is often emphasized that Burke foresaw Napoleon in the Reflections, it might also be said that by joining the European monarchies in resisting the French Revolution, Burke also helped produce Napoleon and a generation of war on the continent and around the world.

How does Burke come down regarding the rights of the French?

H.G. Callaway

Edmund Burke believed that political institutions form a vast system of historical  and adaptable prescriptive rights and customary observances. For Burke, the balance was between the great vested interests of the realm and its ground was simply prescription, not at all immutable individual rights. This contrasts with John Locke who believed in natural rights, derived from Nature and its Creator.

Dear H.G. Callaway,

I did not read Burke except the few texts presented in the thread and all my interpretation is based on these few texts as seen from my historical sensibility.  

The text fro Burke you posted in your last post still fit well in the interpretation I already expressed.  

''Here it seems that the rights of the ordinary French, and concern for the impoverished circumstances under which they lived takes second place ''

It is not the focus or the concern of this text which is focus on what is lost and it is not a material lost for the aristocracy, what is lost is tradition , a tradition which all the institutions and aristocracy where the gardians not only for themself but for the whole nation and in no way is detrimental to the material well being of the whole population.  Even the popular culture in books and movies of today still marvel at the grace of the medieval christian culture, a grace that no modern institution can inspired.  The dept of the old rooted in history. 

''Were not the French in a better position to judge how they could possibly deal with royal absolutism? ... French were not to make their own decisions? ''

Again, I do not think Burke is grieving about the lost of absolutism.  And again lets not put ''the French''  as one view; in the French revolution it is a clashed of views and the French revolution has been won by One of these and Burke is against this one not against ''The French''.

The radical, anti-historical , anti-traditional force behind the French revolution and which Burke is against has now gained the leadership control of the world ; it tried many times : Napoleon, Communistic revolutions, Faschists, Nazi but these attempts failed but where these failed the one through the Bank of England and modern banking succeeded and we are now ruled by it, through ahistorical instrumental reason mediated by money exchanges and this is still consolidating its hold by undermining all other powers left.

But this is getting us out of the currrent debate.

Regards

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Brassard,

Interesting response.

My point was not that the French must be conceived as fully homogeneous, but whether the French people did not themselves have a right to judge of the need of a revolution--where Burke had conceded rights to the Americans, the Irish and to the civilization of India. I don't see that you escape this argument.

My question concerns Burke's awe and deference to the French aristocracy and monarchy, though I think few will doubt of its disadvantages to the French people of those times. Its is as though Burke is simply struck with awe before the image of the French Queen and can think no further to the detailed consequences of the absolutism she represented. When struck with awe, we may see no further.

This is not a matter of the "grace of the medieval christian culture, a grace that no modern institution can inspired."  We are talking about monarchical absolutism and aristocratic privilege during the high Enlightenment. The ferocity of the revolution's attack on the church grew directly out of the dominant intellectual and philosophical culture of the time. In America, the revolution was also a product of the Enlightenment, though the Scottish Enlightenment was frequently more important and usually more pious.

Criticism directed at Burke certainly will not stop before his admiration of European monarchy and aristocracy. Where this aspect of Burke's though is reclaimed,  its a matter of his admiration for virtue and nobility of character. We find no similar Burkean admiration for the British tyrants of old.

I find it somewhat amazing that you fail to equate the contemporary admiration and deference to the new aristocracy of money-power with the defects of the admiration and deference to the aristocracy of old Europe. In a fundamental way, its quite similar: deference to power seems the essential commonality.

I acknowledge your Burkean point that we cannot well do without tradition, but would emphasize the need for evaluation and selection from historical influences. This, in fact, is the general pattern of Burke's career as Whig reformer. Burke is, after all a great reformer of empire, generally aiming to extend English liberty.  But from that perspective, his strenuous and vehement early reaction to the French Revolution seems immoderate and somewhat anomalous. Right?

H.G. Callaway

Dear H.G. Callaway,

''My point was not that the French must be conceived as fully homogeneous, but whether the French people did not themselves have a right to judge of the need of a revolution--where Burke had conceded rights to the Americans, the Irish and to the civilization of India. I don't see that you escape this argument.''

The elites in the two other cases was not divided as the elite in France was.  And to use the expression ''French people'' easily make us forget that the ''French people'' is profoundly divided and as usual the leadership of all parties are in the elite.  The expression ''French people'' in this context is a misleading abstraction and using it into a senstence where it is taken to be a single will and asking if this will is entitle to be his own judge bring us into fictitious reality.  In  reality we have different groups that want very different goals and which struggle against each other.  As an external observer, Burke was seeing a great threat not only for the people of France but for the whole world in letting this new power gets its way.  I see his position totally consistent so far and with the little I know.

''When struck with awe, we may see no further.'' I do not know enough Burke to judge if in his case being stuck by awe may be compromizing his judgement but for many great mind I do not see any incompatibility.  And the main question is ''awe towards what''.  I simply disagree with including ''absolutism'' in what is his focused.  And since I do not know Burke, I will speculate that he might not being totally honest here.  His book might appeal to awe created by the exterior clothings of the monarchy on common people in order to convince them in a manipulative manner. It might be more the politician than the intellectual that is speaking.

The ferocity of the battle in France was a consequence of the clashing of more equal forces than elsewhere.  France was more at the center of the old order than America or England and it is because the center had became more rigid in his resistance which began from the first days of the protestant reform.  But in a majority of the French elite had rejected in his custom and ideas most of the old order long before the revolution , much more than the Reformed elites. 

I see the old admiration of the European aristocratic order very different from the modern admiration of the Lord of money and fame.   The old admiration was associated with a desire to acquire high culture.  The Rousseau of the time had access to the salon not through their title but through their culture.  If I wan a money jackpot then I immediatly become a member of the rich and famous.  No culture required.  Look at the heros of the popular culture of that time and look at the heros of the current popular culture. Look at the heros of the video games.  Look at the heros of politics.  The expression ''What are you worth?'' has a totally different meaning in our age than in that age. 

Given my lack of knowleddge of Burke, I am condemn to project more than I should into his position.  In order for our discussion to stay focus and not become purely ideological, I sudgest that if you want to make an argument against my position, that you provide a text from Burke.  I will then have to take this text into consideration and so my reply will have to be less ideological and more interpretative.  

Regards,

Louis

I will have to Brush up on Burke before commenting conclusively oh his position, but thank you for inviting me to this thread; this issue is very interesting and topical for me.

Philadelphia, PA

Dear all,

Going through the video once again, it seems clear that Onora O'Neill  is arguing that Burke did take human rights seriously. Notice in particular her short, final summary. Burke took human rights seriously and also the need of their institutionalization. However, Burke was more concerned with circumstances and changing circumstances than is typical of contemporary discussions of human rights.

O'Neill emphasizes the claim that rights imply corresponding duties; and she is clearly skeptical of the idea that our modern states are capable alone of carrying all the corresponding duties. The suggestion is that "non-state actors" will have to share the burden or duty of securing human rights. Rights remain merely "abstract," to use Burke's term, when they are not adequately institutionalized in given circumstances and therefore remain unrealized or, we might say, unenforced, unsecured. 

Burke has something to say to us, on O'Neill's analysis of  the criticism of "abstract rights." I might put the point in the following fashion. Beyond the state, we have created many great institutions, public, private and quasi-public. People within these institutions are provided with privileges and advantages which ordinary people lack. This expresses my sense of the contemporary distinction, often made, between "elites" --empowered by their situations within great institutions, and those who are under threat of being "marginalized," if they cross the purposes of the insiders. Some of these institutions are more "money-based" than others, and some claim cultural status. I present this interpretation for discussion, in case anyone should find it of interest. Its a hypothesis on our present circumstances, if you will.

Recall that O'Neill, early on, quotes from William Hazlitt's essay "The Character of Mr. Burke." I found the essay on line, actually there are two essays by Hazlitt, from an early 19th-century book of Political Essays (1819). You can find them at the following links (put up by a Canadian attorney, apparently), and apparently in good scholarly order:

http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/Hazlitt/Political/Burke.htm

http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/Hazlitt/Political/BurkeII.htm

I found the first essay more interesting, and this is the one from which O'Neill quoted at the start of her lecture. Hazlitt is quite obviously a critic of Burke and a defender of the French Revolution. He makes an engaging argument. If he is to be answered, then I suppose this will turn on the need to consider "circumstances" and the institutionalization of human rights.

I hope some of this will prove helpful to those interested in the present question and thread of discussion. The several contributions on hand are much appreciated. I've at least touched on prior points in the discussion and contributions.

H.G. Callaway

H.G. Callaway,

I will quickly testify about what has been the canadian experience with the Bill of rights.

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms has been entrenched in the Constitution of Canadain in part of the Constitution Act, 1982 by Pierre Eliot Trudeau, the father of the current prime miniter.  I was then a young Quebecois nationalist whose hopes for the separation of Quebec two years earlier had been deceived.  Trudeau actually did a constitional coup d'etat without any legitimacy and change the constitution in such a way that it is virtually impossible to change it anymore.  I was then fearcly against the process and against the Bills of Rights which I was perceiving as pushing individual rights against collective one; I was seeing this as a removal of political power from the parlements by the non-elected judicial power.

Three decade and half later and me living with four children on the West coast my opinions is more nuanced.  That bill of Right has a provision that force any provincial government to provide education in French everywhere in Canada where there is a significant french minorities.  So my four children have received all the primary and secondary education in French (also English) and free.  The quality of the program is excellent.  All the french minorities had to fight all the provincial governments up the supreme court and it is only because of this bill of rights that they wan.  Maybe some non-french canadian are not so happy about this privilege for such tiny minority, but my family is happy.

This is only one of the many areas of the canadian life which since the time that the bill of rights has been entrenched in the constitutions that has taken placed because of the courts and on most cases I found as positives.  

The canadian supreme courts has always taken account of the circumstance for the application of the Bill of right.  The rights are not absolute and they have to be balanced against each other.  The first nations benefit the most from the bill of rights.  Their number was not enough and only the courts could push the government.  Because of this Bills of rights, the canadian supreme court in Canada has been an agent of social changes as big as the normal political process.  Overall it is the minorities of all sort that have benefited from this bill of rights.

Although Trudeau did force it on us, I would not remove it today.

Regards,

Freedom does not exist in a vacuum. There is a reason why it’s liberty, equality, fraternity. Freedom means that people should be free to express their identity; should be free to live with dignity; should be free to participate in our national life as an equal. Everyone has a right to be free from the effects of bigotry and from the social tyranny of discrimination.

Source - Tim Soutphommasane (2014), Freedom, the sublime and the patriotic, Australian Human Rights Commission

Dear H.G. Callaway,

Political theory Burke is based on three principles: the history, interpretation of society and continuity. Burke believed that humanity can only realize itself in history, and only through institutions that have stood the test of time.

This is because it has a very specific approach to the man. Aware of frailty, malice and ignorance of human nature, he believed in the necessity of disciplining influence society for the sake of an orderly release of the best sides of the human person and the worst restrictions.

Concept of constitution and state - central in political theory to Burke.

Burke seems to be a whole was willing to acknowledge that the French revolutionaries will succeed in forming a government, and even to provide a certain degree of freedom for its citizens, but he insisted that their methods make them unable to ensure escaping the need for civil society - ffree control.

Regards, Shafagat

Philadelphia, PA

Dear all,

Many thanks for your thoughts and comments.

I have gone back to the lecture by O'Neill to find her evidence for the claim that Burke took human rights seriously; and if you will look again at the video at about 17: 45 into the tape, you will find her quotation from Burke's "Speech on Mr. Fox's East India Bill" --which is quite forceful on the point.  (By the way, it is a speech from 1783, not 1780.) 

It reads as follows:

Edmund Burke, December 1, 1783, “Speech on Mr. Fox's East India Bill”

The rights of men, that is to say, the natural rights of mankind, are indeed sacred things; and if any public measure is proved mischievously to affect them, the objection ought to be fatal to that measure, even if no charter at all could be set up against it.

---pause

Here we see that rights are independent of any recognition of them in official documents, declarations or charters

Burke continues:

If these natural rights are further affirmed and declared by express covenants, if they are clearly defined and secured against chicane, against power, and authority, by written instruments and positive engagements, they are in a still better condition: they partake not only of the sanctity of the object so secured, but of that solemn public faith itself, which secures an object of such importance. Indeed this formal recognition, by the sovereign power, of an original right in the subject, can never be subverted, but by rooting up the holding radical principles of government, and even of society itself. The charters, which we call by distinction great, are public instruments of this nature; I mean the charters of King John and King Henry the Third. The things secured by these instruments may, without any deceitful ambiguity, be very fitly called the chartered rights of men.

---End quotation

See The entire speech at::

http://www.econlib.org/library/LFBooks/Burke/brkSWv4c5.html

Here Burke clearly endorses a version of natural human rights. Comments invited.

You also have Hazlitt's criticism available in my posting above. Who will risk an argument here based on Hazlitt? Did Burke give up his principles in his attack on the French Revolution? Or is there a larger consistency in his different stances on differing issues of policy?

In the speech, Burke argues that the British government must become directly involved in the administration of colonial India, since the British East India Company, which effectively governed, was acting in an exploitative and unacceptable manner. In spite of Burke's arguments, the East India Company continued to govern the colony into the middle of the 19th century. 

H.G. Callaway

Dear H.G. Callaway,

Summary of  Burke message in ‘’Reflections on the Revolution in France’’

In:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/burke/

 ‘’the French, in their enthusiasm for the idea of liberty, had failed to understand that liberty was only one amongst a range of benefits, all of which were required in mutual connexion for a life under civil government that was civilized in the proper sense. The results which flowed from this deficiency of understanding included constitutional arrangements which, because they did not reflect an understanding of liberty that was subtle enough to grasp that the liberty of the many was power, did not qualify popular sovereignty in a way that would restrain the demos effectively. As if an unrestrained populace was not bad enough, an understanding of life only in terms of liberty swept away preceding elaborations of our ideas. This mattered, because the refinement of ideas had been a precondition of refinement of conduct and therefore of the progress of society in many respects. One key instance of these was the respectful treatment of women encouraged since the middle ages by Christian learning and by chivalry. But there was a newer philosophy: ‘on this scheme of things, a king is but a man; a queen is but a woman; a woman is but an animal; and an animal not of the highest order’. The retrogression of humanity itself to animality was not far in the future with ‘a swinish multitude’. The result, as people would no longer be moved by opinion, which had embodied refined ideas, would be that they would need to be governed by force. Force, too, was the ultimate destination of the second portion of Reflections. This suggested that the idea of equality had been connected only too pervasively with the institutional arrangements of the judiciary, the legislative and the executive power—and therefore had produced not the authority of command in government but institutionalised feebleness. At the same time, the perverse results of equality in fiscal arrangements had caused popular discontent and financial instability. The result was a situation which could be controlled only by the force of the military—if, indeed, military order was sustainable when soldiers had absorbed the idea of equality. France, it seemed, tended towards either the rule of force or the disintegration of order.

Burke's philosophical repertoire and historical understanding thus provided the structure of Reflections, and, perhaps more importantly, suggested insights into the character of the Revolution. The inattention of the revolutionaries to the relations that needed to be comprised in a modern government, especially in connexion with liberty, was matched by the inappropriateness to a sovereign regime of structuring its institutions around equality rather than around effective command. These insights suggested that a mis-structuring of the new constitution proceeded from an inadequate philosophical grasp. Such misunderstanding was matched by a failure to understand the history which had produced the elaboration of ideas about conduct that had underwritten government by opinion, and this failure suggested that the Revolution would cause retrogression from this civilized condition towards a less gentle way of proceeding, as well as a less effective one. In other words, Burke's understanding of philosophy, and of the history of Europe, conceived ‘philosophically’, provided grounds for making fundamental claims about the Revolution.’’

Philadelphia, PA

Dear all,

Burke has something to say to us, on O'Neill's analysis of the criticism of "abstract rights." I might put the point in the following fashion. Beyond the state, we have created many great institutions, public, private and quasi-public. People within these institutions are provided with privileges and advantages which ordinary people lack. This expresses my sense of the contemporary distinction, often made, between "elites" --empowered by their situations within great institutions, and those who are under threat of being "marginalized," if they cross the purposes of the insiders. Some of these institutions are more "money-based" than others, and some claim cultural status. I present this interpretation for discussion, in case anyone should find it of interest. Its a hypothesis on our present circumstances, if you will.

H.G. Callaway

Dear All,

The folowing paper:

Burke and De Tocqueville on the French Revolution*

https://www.bu.edu/av/.../3_11_Burke-deToq%20onFr%20Rev.doc

show how much the views of Burke and Tocqueville on the French Revolution resemble each other and enlighten each other.  

Accordig to Tocquevville : ''The condition of these writers prepared men to like general and abstract theories in government, and to trust to them blindly. In the almost infinite distance at which they lived from practical life, no experience came to temper their natural ardour; nothing warned them of the obstacles which existing facts might oppose to the most desirable reforms; they had no idea of the dangers which always accompany the most necessary revolutions.’

            Their animosity to Christianity was a feature which would, of course, attract the attention of every observer. M. de Tocqueville ascribes it entirely to want of political experience, and agrees with Burke in the conclusion that the least degree of practical knowledge would have prevented it.

            Two passages from the Reflections and the Ancient Régime on this subject are strikingly similar. Burke, whilst insisting on the fact that experience had brought Englishmen to reverence religion as the basis of society, says that his experience has lived down scepticism: ‘Who, born within the last forty years, has read one word of Collins and Toland, and Tindan and Chubb and Morgan, and that whole race who called themselves free-thinkers? Who now reads Bolingbroke? Who ever read him through?’

            After referring, not to this passage of Burke, but in general terms to the Deistical controversy in England, M. de Tocqueville says: ‘Why look for examples out of France? What Frenchman in the present day would think of writing such books as those of Diderot and Helvetius? Who would read them? I should almost say, who knows their titles? The incomplete experience which we have acquired in sixty years of public life has sufficed to disgust us with this dangerous literature.’

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Brassard,

All very interesting, these lengthy quotations from secondary sources.

What is to convince us that you actually understand what you quote from others, if you admit to not having read much of Burke, and you do not offer your own comments or reactions to postings clearly relevant to the question?

It seems you are often simply off topic. I think you need to read the primary sources and make an independent judgment.  I don't see that you have any special or scholarly qualifications to continually intervene here. Why don't you start your own question on Tocqueville? An interesting figure, indeed. 

If, on the other hand, you want to criticize the French Revolution, then make an argument. Reply to Hazlitt, for example. IMHO you are yet to make any effective or convincing case, though I'd be interested to see a case made.

H.G. Callaway

Dea H.G: I only now came across with your reactions to my comments on your question.

FIrst of all, let me tell you that all the three quotes are from the Reflections, which was written right after the outbreak of the revolution.

As for your hesitations to agree with me on Burke criticising the abstract principle of rights let me explain my understanding of his position the following way: he seems to deny that there be an abstract politics of human rights, that you can always enforce among all circumstances. This is not to deny the importance of political (as opposed to abstract) rights, but they always depend on the actual circumstances of the rule. THis whole argumentation seems to me like a warning for political realism, as against a doctrinaire type of ideological liberalism.

Let me hint at the problem from a purely personal viewpoint. I found Burke in 1987-88 in Oxford, where I was a postgraduate from communist Hungary. It seemed to answer my needs for two reasons:

1. It was IN FAVOUR OF rights.

2. But he did NOT regard them as ABSTRACT principles (like it was taken in Stalinist constitutions), but as liberties that needed to be granted to individuals because British history established a political consensus around it, as a result of rather stormy historical conflicts. IT is PART OF the POLITICAL CULTURE of the British gentleman (and -woman, we should say), and without that political culture it was hardly viable. Culture cannot be established by statutes or international treaties, even if they may be necessary conditions for their growth.

Thanks for your interest in my views,

kind regards,

Ferenc

H.G. Callaway,

That is fine.  Good bye.

I have revisited the early pages of the text which have greatly clarified my ability to make sense of the question of how Burke would have understood human rights. It is clear that Burke understands rights to democracy and civil and religious liberties as moderately limited. He writes: “these new Mess-Johns in robes and coronets should keep some sort of bounds in the democratic and leveling principles which are expected from their titled pulpits…however favorable to the cause of compulsory freedom, civil and religious, [they] may not be equally conducive to the national tranquility…few restrictions I hope are no great stretches of intolerance, no very violent exertions of despotism.”

He understands law, the arbiter of rights and liberties, to derive from a single force emanating from the ‘original compact’ and ‘common agreement’ of the state and posits as a condition for the binding nature of this force, the observation of its terms and the continuance of its body politic, by both King and people. He acknowledges two distinct legal forms that serve this single force: succession by the common law in the first instance; and in the second, statute law which operates on the principle of common law without changing its substance, despite ‘regulating the mode and describing the persons’.

Burke sees the bond of union embodied in the ancient edifice of monarchy, qualified by Protestantism, as a guarantor principle that can be deviated from in times of emergency to change direction but never be permanently abandoned. Deviation is only 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. Burke sees hereditary descent in blood as constitutive of the overriding edifice that guarantors rights and liberties. In times of crisis or deviation he understands the call to regenerate a deficient system of guarantee to trump call for its impairment; for a legislature to alter direction whilst holding true to over-riding principle, for Burke, this illustrates overriding principle to be ‘inviolable’.      

From these early observations after re-visiting Burke, I think his position would be compatible with upholding international human rights where the right to self-determination through hereditary monarchy can have over-riding claim. Burke’s apparent contradictory perspectives towards the American and French revolutions would in fact be consistent on this reading. That is because where the American revolution was a struggle for national-territorial self-determination (albeit Republican) the French revolution was not. It would be consistent for Burke to reject or at least seek to thoroughly reframe the edifice of monarchy in a colonial context without similarly questioning its local instantiation.

I think comparing the revolutionary populisms of Bo Xi Lai and Thaksin Shinawatra, would provide a great way to explore Burke’s thought in a contemporary Asian context. With respect to O’Neil’s question on what was meant by the abstract nature of rights I think her omission of Marx’s seminal critique of the abstract nature of rights was something of an elephant in the room during her talk. I expect Burke and Marx shared common ground, but where for Marx eradication of rights was the solution, for Burke moderate limitation was preferable. When Burke talks of ‘metaphysical and alchemistical legislators’ … ‘the politicians of metaphysics who have opened schools for sophistry’ … ‘mazes of metaphysic sophistry’ etc., I am reminded very much of the philosophical Marx’s take on rights.

The life of the late Lord Greville Janner, if the catalogue of sexual abuse allegations against him and Police call to prosecute are lent credence, to my mind illustrates well the charges of abstraction levied by both Marx and Burke against rights and liberal justice— a charge of divorce from genuine non abstract embrace of spiritual connection to community. For Janner, on the one hand, when it came to formal legal expression and the narratives of high politics, the man was clearly a passionate advocate of justice and community dignity. His tireless and noble advocacy for the dignity of the Jewish people in the face of the violations of the holocaust illustrates this well.

But at the non-abstract level, if the allegations against him are to be believed, the man exploited his legal and political fortitude as cover for cavorting around the children’s homes of Leicestershire sodomizing vulnerable children who depended on the care of the state. The sophistry of ‘rights’ and ‘justice’ talk translating into noble high political and legal narratives on the one hand, and covering for vile abuse of children on the other, typifies accutely the problem of abstraction that both Marx and Burke laboured.          

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Ferenc,

Thanks for your further thoughts.

I should say, perhaps, that I am less interested in opinions and positions in relation to Burke here than I am in understanding and evaluating O'Neill's stance on the lack of consensus and tension regarding Burke. As she remarks, there has long been a felt contrast between his stances on the American crisis, Ireland and India vs. his criticism of the French Revolution. It is not that I want for a developed view of the matter, but more that I would like to see some detailed, scholarly attention to O'Neill's arguments. I am not entirely sure, of course, that this is possible in the present forum. But I do see some interest for the topic and project.

You wrote, concerning Burke's position:

1. It was IN FAVOUR OF rights.

2. But he did NOT regard them as ABSTRACT principles (like it was taken in Stalinist constitutions), but as liberties that needed to be granted to individuals because British history established a political consensus around it, as a result of rather stormy historical conflicts. IT is PART OF the POLITICAL CULTURE of the British gentleman (and -woman, we should say), and without that political culture it was hardly viable. Culture cannot be established by statutes or international treaties, even if they may be necessary conditions for their growth.

---End quotation

I think we have clearly seen that Burke was in favor of rights, as he understood them, and the usual term for this is "English liberty." This was a matter of what the English themselves expected by way of restraint on the king and the government in London. So your comments on "culture" are to the point here. In many ways, the "Whig ascendancy" which Burke defended, was a matter of a "country party" based in the landed gentry, opposing centralization and concentration of power in the hands of the king and the court. 

It is worth noting that early protests from America, dating at least from the Stamp Act crisis, called for recognition of Americans as possessing "the rights of Englishmen." As protest turned to war for independence, other terms were preferred. But the idea that Parliament in London could properly tax America, as contrasted with the colonial legislatures, was clearly rejected. More generally, I think it was a rejection of the turn toward military-commercial empire in the British domains. The Americans felt less threatened by the competing designs of French and Spanish colonialism in North America than did the British at the cosmopolitan center of the empire. The cosmopolitan center, and the court party, wanted large armies to insure possession of the new domains in North America, but the Whig gentry didn't want to pay for them. The plan was hatched to get the Americans to pay for them, by direct parliamentary taxation. Outside of Canada, the American colonies simply rejected the idea. This was perfectly consistent with the standard Whig suspicion of maintaining large standing armies in times of peace.

Without prejudice to further examination of O'Neill's arguments, I would certainly say that I am basically sympathetic to the Burkean criticism of "abstract rights," and also fairly sympathetic to his criticisms of the French Revolution. Burke does, however, have a highly developed polemical side to his writings and speeches. That surely forms the basis of Hazlitt's criticisms.  Who here might reply to Hazlitt? It would require detailed knowledge of Burke's writings. I believe I know of sources that do. The theme of "abstract rights" deserves comparison with contemporary debates concerning universality of rights.

Since revolutionary France went on to declare war against all monarchies, one may surely come to the suspicion that a doctrine of abstract rights functioned to support universalized expansion and war. Whether the cultures of the European monarchies of those times were suited to support republican forms and freedoms seems not to have greatly concerned the French radicals and revolutionaries.  Burke's criticism hits home in predicting a military-based regime quite similar to what Napoleon actually established. I suppose that one may be reminded of neo-liberal celebration of the recent "Arab Spring" --and the actual results that have subsequently ensued in various localities. On the other hand, Burke himself became an important advocate of war against French radicalism. The famous Burkean moderation seems to have been lost in his late career. 

H.G. Callaway

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Knight,

Allow me to briefly take up your comment on the O'Neil lecture related to the topic of "abstract rights." What she says there is, I think, one of the most interesting aspects of the lecture, and I would like to see more discussion of it.

You wrote:

 With respect to O’Neil’s question on what was meant by the abstract nature of rights I think her omission of Marx’s seminal critique of the abstract nature of rights was something of an elephant in the room during her talk. I expect Burke and Marx shared common ground, but where for Marx eradication of rights was the solution, for Burke moderate limitation was preferable. When Burke talks of  ‘metaphysical and alchemistical legislators’ … ‘the politicians of metaphysics who have opened schools for sophistry’ … ‘mazes of metaphysic sophistry’ etc., I am reminded very much of the philosophical Marx’s take on rights.

---End quotation

It did not seem remarkable to me that O'Neill failed to mention Marx, and I suspect that this may be explained by your own comment, according to which "for Marx eradication of rights was the solution." It is somewhat difficult for me to see how examining such a view would help O'Neill in answering her question about what Burke would say concerning human rights. (I am taking your word on the matter.)

But notice that O'Neill does briefly mention Hegel's criticism of Kant in regard to the theme of "abstract rights." (This comes in about 27:00 Min. into the tape.) She did not say much about either Kant or Hegel, but instead launched into her analysis of Burke on "abstraction." I suppose that her subsequent remarks would be of interest, even perhaps from the perspective of Hegel's criticism of Kant.

"Abstraction" gets quickly cashed in for a concern with "circumstances." Doctrines of "abstract rights" tend to be misleading, she suggests, because crucial aspects of the circumstances required for sensible application of rights go missing. She further argues that the most relevant circumstances involve the allocation of corresponding duties. She is skeptical of the idea that politically organized states can by themselves carry the full burden of related duties. Individuals and non-state actors and institutions must be supporting players in an adequate regime of human rights.

I would say, in this connection that if you discover that your teacher or anyone else in your institution, or say, a public official, has no concern for human rights, beyond mouthing popular platitudes when required, then it would be a good idea to keep your distance. Or, if you discover that the prevalent talk of "human rights" continually and exclusively focuses on the rights of groups, in which you happen not to be included, then that is also good reason to keep your distance from those advocates. O'Neill briefly mentions an interpretation of abstract rights as involving a "smuggling in" of false ideas; and it seems to the point to mention that where there are no ordinary, widely available means for ensuring human rights, then the "abstract" character of the doctrine may simply function as a cover for political favoritism: getting partisan supporters into the best position to be supporters. 

Burke prefaced one of his most famous writings with a quotation from Cicero, from the In Verrum speeches (70BC) , in which Cicero prosecuted a delinquent official. The passage translates as follows:

"But this hidden evil in the heart of a man's own household not only remains invisible but also surprises him before he can watch and reconnoiter."

See the opening of Burke's 1770 "Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents."

"Hoc vero occultum, intestinum ac domesticum malum, non modo non existit, verum etiam opprimit, antequam prospicere atque explorare potueris."—Cicero.

H.G. Callaway

I think the position taken by Hannah Arendt very much echoed Burke's position on human right..... no states, no rights......  

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Bates,

Thanks for your brief comment.

Can you say if and where Arendt discussed Burke on human rights?

H.G. Callaway

Philadelphia, PA

Dear all,

I would like to briefly go back to the passage from Burke's (1783) "Speech on Mr. Fox's East India Bill," which we found quoted by O'Neill, as evidence of Burke taking natural, human rights serious. The passage reads as follows:

The rights of men, that is to say, the natural rights of mankind, are indeed sacred things; and if any public measure is proved mischievously to affect them, the objection ought to be fatal to that measure, even if no charter at all could be set up against it. If these natural rights are further affirmed and declared by express covenants, if they are clearly defined and secured against chicane, against power, and authority, by written instruments and positive engagements, they are in a still better condition: they partake not only of the sanctity of the object so secured, but of that solemn public faith itself, which secures an object of such importance. Indeed this formal recognition, by the sovereign power, of an original right in the subject, can never be subverted, but by rooting up the holding radical principles of government, and even of society itself. The charters, which we call by distinction great, are public instruments of this nature; I mean the charters of King John and King Henry the Third. The things secured by these instruments may, without any deceitful ambiguity, be very fitly called the chartered rights of men.

---End quotation

It is worth remarking, I think, that this speech was given, in the House of Commons, subsequent to the battle of Yorktown (1781) and subsequent to the Treaty of Paris (September 1783), which acknowledged American independence. In consequence, Burke might fairly be viewed as emphasizing the roots of the doctrine of "natural rights," very prominent in the discourse of the American patriots (after their earlier claims of the "rights of Englishmen" had subsided)  in the British constitution--for purposes of renewed deployment concerning the affairs of the British empire in India. The reference to the "charter" of king John, e.g., is to the Magna Charta. Burke thus seems to confirm, indirectly, that "the rights of Englishmen" are natural human rights --both where "chartered" and where not chartered.  In works during the American crisis, in contrast, Burke emphasized the "privileges" of the Americans, apparently to avoid putting American "rights" into a more direct conflict with the Whig (and Tory) doctrine of the ultimate "sovereignty" of "the king-in-Parliament."

Burke's emphasis on "charters" in this passage, can be understood in contrast to "abstract rights," and as allowing some room for Burke's general anti- rationalism in politics; but it is evident in the larger text that he is intent on asserting the superiority of the constitutional "charters," and parliamentary powers of supervision,  in contrast to the charter granting a trading monopoly to the East India Company. In any case, you will find his skepticism regarding the compatibility of English liberty (and natural rights) with military-commercial empire in full bloom in this speech.

The entire text of Burke's speech, in pdf images of the original edition, is available via the following link and can be downloaded from there:

https://archive.org/details/mrburkesspeecho00burkgoog

H.G. Callaway

Philadelphia, PA

Dear all,

I take it, from the lack of further comments, that a consensus has emerged among readers to the effect that Burke on natural human rights is consistent with his critical view of the French Revolution. I would like to have seen more attention to the details. I do not mean to close the question, if there are indeed further doubts or questions.

The following text, which I've titled "English Liberty in America," borrowing from Santayana, seems to me the kind of conclusion which might be drawn from the Burkean character of the American constitutional settlement. I've taken the text from the opening chapter of my book, Memories and Portraits, Explorations in American Thought --which is available from the publisher and various booksellers:

http://www.cambridgescholars.com/memories-and-portraits-32

H.G. Callaway

Addendum, "English Liberty in America"

An American philosophy of openness and tolerance there must be, a general way of thought, suited to stand even against the practi­cal man’s tendency of intol­erance and impatience with our philoso­phizing. Can we be both practical and principled? This is a classic question of American thought. The practical imagina­tion is respon­sible for our active engage­ment with life and the environ­ment. Yet, on the other hand, it has its own general moral and social condi­tions. Practical cooperation and joint enter­prise do not often arise in an anarchic moral vacuum. They do not exist everywhere. What philosophy will sustain the practical imagina­tion and yet sustain itself and thus the general social and institutional conditions within which the practical imagina­tion is free to operate? There must be a law of freedom. American thought circles and focuses incessantly and fruitfully about the mean­ing of freedom.

The practical imagination projects potentialities and opportuni­ties, as these belong, for instance, to the American style in the inte­gration of immigrants. This cannot be a matter of mere images and mirages of oppor­tunities and potentialities, a social bait and switch —or it will cease to be genuinely practical. What we imagine in any given case is free and coop­erative activity. But this tends, not infre­quently, to decline into acquisitive materialism, which trades in opportunity and activity for things; or falling into an opposite error it reifies unwork­able ideals. How to keep to the golden mean?

“The will is a mass of passions,” says Santayana (with a typical overstatement) in “English Liberty in America,” and “when it sets up absolute claims it is both tragic and ridiculous”(Santayana 1920, “English Liberty in America,” in Character and Opinion in the United States, p. 227.) Though we may doubt that the will is always so little integrated as a “mass of passions,” Santayana draws a proper conclusion in spite of that. The philosophy suited to sustain the realm and reign of free cooperation is anti-absolutist, and as a matter of positive policy it is fallibilistic. It must tolerate some risk. Those for whom a conservative and principled fallibilism is not suffi­cient as a practical policy simply demand too much. Demanding certainty of results is a formula for perpetuation of an insider estab­lishment which can consis­tently count on powerful support. Though this may seem a harsh rule on occa­sion, as is the intoler­ance of intolerance, it is a necessary rule of freedom and of the freedom of inquiry—whether theoretical inquiry or the practical variety of finding out together what it is possible to do. Conserving the principles of free­dom is the essence of liberality.

The public sphere of openness to innovation may easily fail, and fail to sustain us, for want of “discrimi­nating enthusiasm,” to use Agnes Repplier’s phrase. Enthu­siasms may be too prevalent and indis­criminately placed—thus chiefly wasted—or, at the oppo­site extreme they may be simply absent or insuffi­cient. Philadel­phia, in some contrast with elsewhere, is not known chiefly as a place of exces­sive enthusi­asms. It is more as though the local gods charged with protecting the muses’ work are often out to lunch when you need them. Or, the point can be put the other way around. If it is not a matter of higher protective powers lacking, then one readily thinks of it as a corre­sponding excess. We must suspect that free­dom of association and its sphere of action are abridged by inter­ven­tions which halt or overrule: domination of “veto groups,” or, in other words, social and insti­tutional rigidity.

--end text----

"Can we be both practical and principled?" Big ouch... really big. Excellent text, dear H.G.

Best regards, Lilliana

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Ramos-Collado,

Many thanks for your kind words and comment.

Being practical without principle is easy, of course. One form of this is found in the versions of "insider trading" or favoritism which Burke often criticized among the "Court party" and the "friends of the king" during the American crisis of the late 18th century. Favoritism tended to remove responsibility of the ministers to the House of Commons and to the people represented by the members of the Commons. As he argued, this was detrimental to the common good and the public interest. It facilitated short-sighted expediency in dealing with outstanding problems, and Burke argued that in this way it was the cause of public discontent --including the discontent in the American colonies. Insider favoritism one should expect to amount to a means of exploiting outsiders. Looking at growing inequalities around the world, and the political discontent therewith connected, one might well expect that similar phenomena are involved. 

Being overly "principled" (i.e., in rationalistic style) without being practical is also relatively easy. Burke thought of this in terms of "abstract" political theory directly applied to policy questions without need of attending to the details. His anti-rationalism in politics runs along these lines, and so does his criticism of the French Enlightenment and the French Revolution. Burkean reform is gradual and bit by bit, because if you try to change everything at once, then there is no telling what the actual effects will be. 

I did not have Burke in mind when I wrote the passage above, from my Memories and Portraits, but it seems to fit with Burkean conclusions. He was a practicing politician, with a philosophical background and philosophical and literary inclinations. He believed in party affiliations based on constitutional principles, and he believed in the historical basis of viable reform. The lack of attention to history in American society may suggest a more random pattern of trial and error until we eventually get around to something that "works" in the society and political forms we actually have. Greater attention to history, I think, would make the selection of policy and politicians more regular and manageable. It tends to cast cold water of wilder ideas.

H.G. Callaway 

Dear H.G., sometimes I think we overestimate "history". I think of critics and theorists like Hayden White or Michel Foucault explaining how that narrative we call history is faulty at best, the end product of a somebody with a point of view and an idea of what is wrong and what is right. Hermeneutics does not include Hermes' name in vain: Hermes loved the occult, was a thief, a god that carried the souls of the dead to Hades. Interpretation of anything is always a wager. Even deciding what would we choose as our "documents" on which to write a historical narrative are partial, out of context, or just a plain wrong choice. 

What can we learn from history? What lessons? What insights? As David Lowenthal has famously said, "the past is a foreign country" and the narrative monuments we may chose to shore up our interpretation of history are determined from our present as a vantage point from where we can allegedly see, finally, what happened. This is what I think you suggest: we may derive lessons from history because that history is already closed, finished, complete, even exemplary in a Medieval way: exemplum. Even though I agree with what I understand from your comment that the past is arguably complete and thus may tell us something about the present, again, the past is now past its time, and very hard to understand because of all the evidence that is not available to us in terms of proof.

Having said that, I stop to think in Augustine of Hippo's idea of time: "There are three times: the past of the present, the present of the present and the future of the present." To which Agamben responds by saying that the present is beyond our apprehension, and that only the past can be addressed, but without much hope. From this I gather that this whole discussion on Burke's view on good governance, citizenship and human rights must be seen as partial remains we can question as remains (why these and not other remains) and as proof of something else than themselves (why the rest of Burke's thoughts are not available to our reflection). Maybe it is inside those black holes that we should look for why a certain figure of Burke has come down to us, and not another. The past is the only one to be questioned but its answers will be spasmodic, incomplete, ravaged by the very eyes the present has given us to scrutinize the past, downplaying the fact that the past is a foreign country.

Maybe we must simply reinvent Burke, stop trying to second guess his intentions, and read him from the present, which is the only time we have although tentative, vestigial, obscure .

Best regards, Lilliana

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Ramos-Callado,

Thanks for your short lecture on the relevance of history, its elusiveness and its possible misuses. Allow me to register my brief dissent.

It seems to me clearly an overstatement to suggest that "the narrative we call history is faulty at best." To judge of some historical narrative that it is faulty would seem to presuppose another which is not--or which is less faulty in some particular way. If one supposes that all historical narratives are faulty, then there is nowhere to stand to make the judgment.

The alternative is to see historical narratives as better or worse. At that point, to make a criticism of any given narrative one requires some alternative and a positive evaluation of it. The overstatement, in contrast appears as a resignation from judgment; and if we resign from judgment, then that amounts to merely going along with the reigning judgments: an excessively conservative attitude or effect. It generalizes and neglects all the details, and so it would appear to be a version of rationalism, of the sort Burke criticized in politics.

You wrote:

Interpretation of anything is always a wager. Even deciding what would we choose as our "documents" on which to write a historical narrative are partial, out of context, or just a plain wrong choice.

---End quotation

Interpretations, like any intellectual product are, again, better and worse; I hesitate to repeat the argument above, merely replacing term for term. If every selection of documents, because it is a selection, is therefore "out of context," "or just plain wrong," then the distinction between appropriate and less appropriate context has no standing or purchase. What can justly be said of any interpretation cuts no ice against any one interpretation in particular. So, again, I see an overstatement which neglects the details. You make no argument touching on any particular interpretation. Similar attitudes, in my impression, leave interpretation as arbitrary and often overtly motivated by extrinsic factors and bias and preferences. 

I have no relevant opinion about history being "closed." History becomes prominent, I believe, when other avenues of discourse have been blocked up with controversy and divisiveness. The historians have, in the mean time, been trying to understand the past in its own terms. From that perspective, they may give some judgment --otherwise so captured and entwined in intellectual and moral divisions as to be practically unavailable. But the usefulness of history is to see continuities and discontinuities. Knowing where we have been we may get a better idea of where to go from here; but chiefly it serves to highlight contemporary excesses.

It has frequently been held that the only good sample of Burke is the whole of Burke. (As I recall, the claim originates from Hazlitt.) In consequence, a good discussion of Burke requires a good background in his writings. That not all his writings have been featured in the present thread, though, tells us little about the background of the participants. So, it provides little ground for criticism. It seems clear to me, at least, that the relevance of Burke for many contemporaries has much to do with the resemblance between his times and our own. We want to avoid the prospect and effects of anything resembling world-wide military-commercial competitions and subservience to them. What I take from Burke is the idea that "English liberty" was found incompatible with the imperatives of empire. That also casts further doubts on 19th-century liberal imperialism.

H.G. Callaway

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Laird,

Thanks for the quotation from Marx on Burke. I have run across it before, but it is nice to have it on hand. It is, of course, about the most insulting of comments on Burke.

It is true that Burke worked as a paid representative of the colony of New York for a time. This was after the New York colonial assembly was suspended and forbidden to  legislate by an act of Parliament. They had failed to provide support to British forces in New York City and Albany, in accordance with the earlier Quartering Act. The entire episode was regarded as an affront to American sensibilities, and I think it rather admirable of Burke to have taken up a role representing New York in London. 

The idea that Burke would have been primarily motivated by monetary benefits from the colony seems a rather strange, narrow kind of materialist reduction of Burke's motivations in the American crisis. Moreover, Burke was an opponent of oligarchy, understood to mean rule by a small elite for its own benefit and in opposition to the common good. So the insult seems a piece of political propaganda. Burke was a critic of the "sin of servility." He believed that the Whig peers were much needed to control of the power and prerogatives of the monarchy and to support the powers of parliament and its control of the executive. Its a kind of division of powers argument--given the political resources then available.

Near the end of his career, Burke accepted a pension (from king George III, as I recall) and attempted to recover his place in Parliamentary debate or British politics--in light of his writings critical of the French Revolution. He also broke with his Whig friends and Charles James Fox in particular. This did not work out for him and he was mostly sidelined after the impeachment trial of Warren Hastings--and the failure to get a conviction in the House of Lords.

The issue of the consistency of Burke on the American crisis and Burke on the French Revolution is a complex one. It is certainly possible to argue the matter one way or the other. But many scholars do see him as consistent --though his stance is certainly complex. It centers on his criticism of "abstract rights" and his reformism. Burke certainly did not want to see the Whig tradition re-interpreted to endorse the French Revolution and he was centrally concerned with the influence of the French Revolution on British (and Irish) politics. He became quite frustrated with his Whig friends and others who were temped in the direction of the French Revolution.  

Burke definitely believed in commerce, and of course, he defended the first British empire--by attempting to reform it. He thought religion necessary to the pursuit of justice, humanity and human virtue. (Of course, for Marx, religion was the "opiate of the people," and thereby beneath contempt.) Marx in contrast is a paradigm of the "aggressive atheist." Burke was also a critic of the commercial excesses of the empire--as with the rule of the East India Company and in the prosecution of Hastings. Often enough, those attempting to limit the excesses of business and commerce get counted as friends neither to business nor to the enemies of business. The subtle positions sometime escape the notice or grasp of the intensive political enthusiasts. The point of reform is often to avoid "throwing out the baby with the bathwater."  Marx seemed to think them inseparable.

H.G. Callaway

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Laird,

Dr. Johnson makes some interesting critical comments on Burke, and we might do well here to discuss them, one at a time, perhaps? Burke and Johnson belonged to the same London club, as I recall. Dr. Johnson was not one to allow anything of interest go by unremarked. I can think of some of his remarks which may be considered relevant to the theme of Burke on human rights. But perhaps you have something in particular in mind that you'd care to mention? 

I am sure, again, that much could be said in favor of Marx's radicalism, however it might ultimately be evaluated overall. These are different questions. That one is against "throwing out the baby with the bathwater," does not mean that one is against throwing out the bathwater. By the same token, if Burke was against the excesses of the East India Company, say, including the combination of commerce and political rule in India in the same hands, then it does not follow, of course, that Burke was against trade with India. Who could disagree with "let there be clean water and a bar of soap, the newborn shall be clean?" Very few, I think. On the other hand, how many would agree to the inevitability of international class warfare as a solution to all chief human problems?

The Burkean reformer wants to separate the excesses and defects from existing practices. The revolutionary, on the other hand often takes no responsibility for the existing state of things, content that they can only get worse--and willing to benefit by foreseen problems? Can no genuine problems be solved in the ordinary course of human relations and interactions, so that it is best to interrupt them and overturn them all--at will? This, of course, much resembles the interruptions of normal human relations imposed by imperial domination. Marx  is both opponent and advocate of rule by an economic class.  Burke can then be abused, because a "class enemy" --and freely distorted? 

What is originally written in German or in English, or any other language may, of course,  turn out "quite something else" if rendered in Italian, French or Chinese. But why this may be so, is a good question--that doesn't answer itself.If we can distinguish better and worse in interpretations, then we can also see, on occasion what is merely purposeful or even unintended distortion.

I recall that one of the great problems of the old DDR was that the people in the East could view West German television. Seeing and hearing for themselves something of what was going on beyond the borders of the East German state, they came to disbelieve what they were being told about life in the West. The official (and contentious) accounts or interpretations, then fell away. In somewhat this way, we see that what is written in German may turn out quite different if rewritten in German. But why this may be so is an interesting intellectual-moral question. The rejection of contentious, unfounded, or merely self-interested and instrumentalized interpretations is a serious moral and intellectual issue which enters deeply into our concern with the common good. 

H.G. Callaway

Philadelphia, PA

Dear all,

I've just put up the "pretext" for my forthcoming book focused on Edmund Burke and the American crisis, and I hope that readers of this thread will want to have a look:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/297758694_EDMUND_BURKE_THE_IMPERATIVES_OF_EMPIRE_AND_THE_AMERICAN_REVOLUTION_AN_INTERPRETATION

I will be seeking possible reviewers as soon as the book is through production, or perhaps sooner.

One topic that interested me as I was putting this book together is Burke's very Whig aversion to "standing armies" in times of peace. This seems to have been partly based on a similar aversion among the great Whig peers; and it is definitely a significant feature in the political thought of the American founders. The point is pretty directly connected with the advent of the American crisis of the 1760's and 1770's.

After the defeat of the French in North America, and the British capture of Quebec, which involved colonial American support, the British found themselves in the possession of a great continental empire in North America. The neo-Tory party around king George III wanted a large military establishment to protect the new possessions, but as Burke tells the story, the Whig peers didn't want to pay for it, and in any case did not generally want to see an increase in royal powers and prerogatives. There was a history here of English kings using a large standing army to suppress the local gentry in the country. The Whigs were definitely "the country party," as contrasted with the "Court party." The solution which arose from the "friends of the king" was to tax the colonies themselves to support the new military establishment. But, of course, the American colonies objected, and this was the root of the American crisis.

Please have a look at my "pretext." Comments invited.

H.G. Callaway 

Book EDMUND BURKE, THE IMPERATIVES OF EMPIRE AND THE AMERICAN REV...

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Laird,

I must say, you cover a lot of territory in your brief posting.

I will pass on commenting on Hawking's efforts at poetry.

"English liberty" also covers a lot of territory. Basic in this was parliamentary control over the executive government. As things stand, nothing can get through Congress without the approval of the House of Representatives in the U.S. That's not about to change.The same is true of the states and the powers of their legislatures.

Beyond the basics, English liberty involves the independence of the judiciary and the protections of basic legal rights, such as Habeas Corpus,  right of trial by jury, and defense of the freedom of speech, the press, free assembly, religion, etc. All these things are in pretty good shape in the U.S., I'd say. Debates about the size and scope of the federal government and the powers of the states are as old as the republic--or older even in a broad sense which takes in the colonial debates concerning the colonies and the government in London.

Anyone who believe in the first amendment, including freedom of speech, press, religion, etc., believes in limitation of powers of the state. Some, of course, believe in more limitations, beyond these, and others in less.

The debates go on. Basically, we are not afraid of open debate. America has always benefited by refugees from oppression and religious persecution. They make some of our best citizens. If you put up a sign "freedom of religion" above your front door, and wait a couple hundred years, then you accumulate some very intensive dedication to freedom.

H.G. Callaway

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Laird,

I really think that we would be going well off-topic here to attempt to discuss economic and political developments in China. I am going to beg off that objective here.

Your contrast between Jefferson and Hamilton is of some greater interest for present purposes, though it takes us away from more direct discussion of Burke and human rights. There are resemblances --even continuities-- between the British Whigs and the American founders, though.

The doctrine of the "divine right of kings," in British history, died out at the time of the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688-1689. This is the traditional dating of the "ascendancy of Parliament" and the beginning of what I've called the "Whig ascendancy." The Whig peers were organized to control the Royal and executive government, most importantly, by the recognized power to withhold funding or "support." Rather than supporting the greatest center of power, the "country party" established itself in power by its opposition. As I have said, before, this is reasonably viewed as a matter of a division of power, given the political resources then available. The British constitution was widely admired because of this.

The period of the American crisis culminates nearly a hundred years later, though starting in the 1760's. The post 1783, post independence conflicts between the emerging "Federalists" and "Jeffersonian Republicans" were, in my view at least, a debate and conflict concerned with what kind of country America was going to be.

The Hamiltonian idea of organizing the new nation along the lines of the British empire, was largely rejected. Washington and Adams are the only two Presidents usually thought of as Federalists. Given the outcome of the War of 1812, the Federalist party was more or less discredited and fell apart. But 1800, the election in which Jefferson first came into office as President, is usually thought of as the start of the so-called "Virginia dynasty." Support for the Federalists had been concentrated in New England, which was heavily involved in the traditional trading relations --familiar from the British empire and the colonial period. America was no island nation, however, and the originally coastal states now had a gigantic inland to be concerned with. How could the continent be organized while avoiding turning it into a scene of continual wars --as between the European nations? 

Well, you could try to go the way of the British empire, depend on foreign trade and colonies for wealth --and keep a large army and navy to defend the continental expanse and the foreign possessions. This would have amounted to directly entering into the European competitions for empire and trade.That course was avoided.

America had just won an anti-colonial war, and was not inclined to follow any British example. The federal union was designed to admit new states on an equal basis and to provide for the expansion of the small, independent farmers who were the backbone of the Jeffersonian Republican electorate. Instead of a large standing army, the idea was to depend on local militias for immediate purposes in peace-time. Jefferson had in fact asked that protection against standing armies be included in the Bill of Rights --though it wasn't eventually included. In any case, the traditional Whig aversion to standing armies was well represented among the American founders. The Whigs had held that a standing army in peace-time gave too much power to the king and the executive government.  The founders agreed with this sentiment. There was to be a new division of powers between the states and the federal government.

Often enough, Hamilton, who was the first secretary of the treasury, under President  Washington, was thought of as being a kind of American Tory. He died early --in a duel fought against Jefferson's Vice President. After the decline of the Federalist party, it was replace by a new American Whig party, which emphasized internal development--canals, railroads, post roads, and the development of domestic manufacturing.At the time of Lincoln, the Whigs were absorbed into the new Republican party. (The party of Jefferson is now called the Democratic party.)

Before the decline of the Federalists, according to the party of Jefferson at least, the U.S. has been overly oriented to foreign commerce and banking interests. So, they re-balanced it toward the development of a continent sized country of equal states --each of which, large or small, rich or poor,  inland or coastal, has exactly two votes in the U.S. Senate.  Acknowledging the very damaging defect of the toleration of slavery in the constitution of 1789,--and its late consequence in Civil War in the 1860's, it was still a pretty good plan.

H.G. Callaway

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Laird,

Yes, even the National Review, sees something wrong with Mr. Trump's candidacy for President. He was roundly denounced by the magazine's writers and editors in an earlier issue which came to my attention.

Your author says of Burke:

As Edmund Burke memorably put it, a sensible citizen does not wait for an “actual grievance” to intrude upon his liberty, but prefers to “augur misgovernment at a distance; and snuff the approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze.”

---End quotation

Trump is lacking in Burkean "moderation," something I would recommend to any more ideological folks on the right or in conservative circles. To follow my analogy to the times of the American crisis, Trump strikes me as an American Tory, wanting to be king, so that he can send out his loyal retainers to have the run of the American "empire." There is reason to think of any "big government" conservatives in somewhat similar, neo-Tory terms. The mere suspicion of tyranny, that is, rule for the good of the rulers alone, should, indeed evoke the severe kinds of criticism which the NR has in fact leveled at Mr. Trump.

Part of the trouble with ever bigger government, and ever more centralization of power, as many seem to forget, is the danger of it getting into the wrong hands. Mr. Trump is riding a wave of popular discontent on the right, just as Senator Sanders is riding the same wave of popular discontent on the left. The great object of American divisiveness concerns who or which party will get to distribute the benefits of centralized power to their friends and supporters. In such a conflict the common good may well be allowed far out of sight.

H.G. Callaway

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Laird,

Mr. Trump is a New York real estate developer.

If we compare figures of American history to Napoleon, then about the closest you can get is Andrew Jackson, first General Jackson and later President Jackson. Jackson defeated the British at New Orleans at the end of the War of 1812, and became a national hero. He was elected President in 1828, defeating the incumbent, President J.Q. Adams,  and Jackson served two terms in office. But Jackson was no Napoleon, and Trump is no Jackson. Trump is at most a sign of contemporary, popular discontents. Likewise, Senator Sanders, in his run against Mrs. Clinton, is a sign of popular discontent.

I think the Republicans would do well not to nominate Mr. Trump.

Regarding contemporary evaluation of Andrew Jackson, see my review of Howe's book from the Oxford History of the U.S.:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/264350562_HG_Callaway_Review_of_Daniel_Walker_Howe's_What_Hath_God_Wrought_The_Transformation_of_America_1815-1848_Oxford_University_Press_2007

Many thanks for your appreciative words. The biography of Lafayette sounds interesting. Do you have a link? Lafayette was a hero of the American Revolution and later commanded the Paris national guard during the storming of the Bastille. He sent the key to the Bastille to President Washington, and you can still see it on the wall at Washington's home, Mt. Vernon, Virginia. Washington, however, had no desire to enter into the European wars of the French Revolution and declared American neutrality. 

H.G. Callaway

Article H.G. Callaway: Review of Daniel Walker Howe's What Hath God ...

Philadelphia, PA

Dear all,

I have just come across a new review on line, devoted to Richard Bourke's (2015) book, Empire and Revolution, The Political Life of Edmund Burke. The review appeared in the British periodical, Standpoint:

http://www.standpointmag.co.uk/node/6132/full

This is a moderately lengthy review, but well worth going through, for those who have been reading along, since it addresses the charge of inconsistency against Edmund Burke, in connection with his reaction to the French Revolution. I believe that readers of this thread will generally find the review congenial.

Bourke's treatment of Edmund Burke is of general interest, for readers of this thread, and Princeton University Press, the publisher, has made the Introduction to the volume available on line. You can find it here:

http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/i10567.pdf

Richard Bourke is Professor of the history of political thought and is a co-director of the Center for the Study of the History of Political Thought at Queen Mary University in London. I am sure that this new comprehensive interpretation (1000pp.) will have a large impact on Burke studies.

Have a look.

H.G. Callaway

Philadelphia, PA

Dear all,

The publisher, Cambridge Scholars, has now made available a sample of my new book, Edmund Burke, the Imperatives of Empire and the American Revolution which you can find, following this link:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/301219624_CambrigeScholarsBurke-sample

The same includes part of my Introduction to the volume. The full book will be available shortly, and I plan to keep possible readers informed when the book does become available.

More later.

H.G. Callaway

Data CambrigeScholarsBurke-sample

H.G.,

To me, Burke places a great emphasis on social convention, general agreement and habit. He appears to have respected property, religion, and the main outlines of a political constitution. His perspective on human rights are problematical. He states: "human rights are incapable of definition but not incapable to be discerned." He certainly did not believe in the concept of natural equality. What this appears to lead to is the principle of subsidiarity-the higher shall govern the lower, but each shall have their place. Quoting him again: "the wiser, the more expert, and the more opulent conduct, and by conducting enlighten and protect the weaker, the less knowing, and the less provided with the goods of fortune." In short, he is not a secular progressive, but taken to its conclusion his thoughts could lead to a moderate, corporate state.

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Belfiglio,

For certain, Burke was no radical democrat, though he did insist on the importance of representation in ways that tended to support the colonial American slogan "No taxation without representation." He held that the House of Commons had to be able to control the executive government and that the constituents had to be able to control their representatives. Certainly, Burke was no "secular progressive" in any modern sense, he was an 18th-century British Whig; and to even raise such a question seems to carry a suggestion of anachronism.

In any case, in contrast with much of the discussion above, you claim "His perspective on human rights are problematical. He states: 'human rights are incapable of definition but not incapable to be discerned.' " This strikes me as being of direct interest to the present question and thread. I wonder if you might give a source for this quotation. 

I would think that it would be widely taken as given that no strict and inclusive definition of human rights can be provided. That was the perspective of the American founders, and it seems to me viable. In terms, of later rhetoric, there is always some "higher law" which we are yet to recognize and implement. In general, the listing of rights, say, in the Bill of Rights was not understood to be exhaustive. 

I'm also interested in your view that "taken to its conclusion his thoughts could lead to a moderate, corporate state." Again, the claims suggests something of anachronism, though your qualification "moderate," is of interest. It seems to the point here to recall that Burke was a great critic of the British East India Company and of its economically motivated administration of its provinces in India. I think it reasonable to think of him as a critic of the excesses of empire generally, which he saw as coming into conflict with "English liberty," and with parliamentary control of the executive government. The agents of empire, in cooperation with the "friends of the king," the neo-Tory faction in Parliament, threatened the power and standing of the Whigs.

H.G. Callaway

Philadelphia, PA

Dear all,

Here follows a short quotation from Burke which I think of as of some interest fr this question and thread:

Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites, — in proportion as their love to justice is above their rapacity, — in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption, — in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.

Letter to a Member of the National Assembly (1791).

Comments invited.

Here we see a very Burkean emphasis on the need of virtue. This belongs to his more conservative side in contrast to his reformist side. Can a people be free if they generally reject self-restraint?

H.G. Callaway

Philadelphia, PA

Dear all,

My new volume on Edmund Burke, empire and the American Revolution is now available from the publisher, Cambridge Scholars, and you can order a copy of the book from their web pages:

http://www.cambridgescholars.com/edmund-burke-the-imperatives-of-empire-and-the-american-revolution

Please let me know if you may be in a position to place a review of the volume. I can ask the publisher to send out some review copies.

Thank you for your kind attention. This book has been a good deal of work, over a period of several years; and the related literature in the history of political thought is enormous.

H.G. Callaway

All about human rights:

Edmund Burke, author of Reflections on the Revolution in France, is known to a wide public as a classic political thinker: it is less well understood that his intellectual achievement depended upon his understanding of philosophy and use of it in the practical writings and speeches by which he is chiefly known. The present essay explores the character and significance of the use of philosophy in his thought.

https://faintdamnation.wordpress.com/2014/10/07/why-the-tories-hate-the-human-rights-act-burke-and-the-roots-of-conservatism/

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/burke/

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Alam & readers

Its interesting that the first text you link, the "faint damnation" piece, appears to come from a British newspaper and seems aimed at the British Tory party, and their views of the British "Human Rights Act," and its relationship to "The European Declaration of Human Rights."  There Burke seems to be all about "tradition" and "conservatism." In any case, that is the basis of the criticism on offer by the author. It is worth noting, in this connection that the relationship of the newly instituted British Supreme Court to the European Courts is still somewhat up in the air. 

However, in the second piece you link, from the Stanford Encyclopedia, attempting a general overview of Burke in relation to philosophy and politics, the word "tradition" is never used; and the single use of the word "conservative," suggests (lightly) some doubts on the contemporary conservatives' use of Burke. Tradition was, no doubt important in Burke's thought, and the lack of a discussion of this element seems perhaps an omission in the Stanford article. But tradition is not the only element of Burke's thought. We have seen in the discussion on this thread that Burke did endorse the idea of human rights. What he thought, specifically about the French Declaration of 1789 is yet to be explored in any detail.

It is certainly of interest here to try to understand something of the admiration for Burke among contemporary conservatives; yet, on the other hand, there is a considerable history of Burke being claimed as an icon of British liberal thought. One might suspect that Burke's thought is more complex than sometimes suspected. 

H.G. Callaway

H.G.,

I have been reading Burke, spurred on by the genius of your analysis. It seems to me that his philosophy  is based on his own reaction to events in which he took part.  He seems to have insufficient knowledge  of history and philosophy.  He did not give a systematic form even to his own reflections on political and social morality; still less did he trace their bearing on the larger questions of religion and science of which they were a part. He seems unaware of the relation of his ideas, or of  the system of natural law  that he opposed, to the whole intellectual history of modern Europe. An advocatus diaboli might even argue that Burke had no consistent philosophy at all. We must not confuse complexity with inconsistency.  

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Belfiglio,

You seem to have a particularly low opinion of Burke. This may or may not be relevant to explaining or evaluating Burke's views on human rights. (That is the question on this thread.) You express some opinions on Burke, but I do not see that you support your claims in your posting. You claim to be "spurred on by the genius" of my "analysis." But you do not identify anything which you think especially worthy of mention.

It is certainly not clear to me that Burke "opposed" a "system of natural law." Many writers, on the contrary, take an opposite view. You do not offer any evidence or argument for your claim.

Perhaps you are just playing devil's advocate? Your posting strikes me as merely polemical and not very helpful. A fishing expedition?

H.G. Callaway

Dear H.G.

I believe our interaction ends now.

Respectfully, Val

Philadelphia, PA

Dear all,

I've just come across an article, on line, concerned with Edmund Burke and human rights, which I would like to point out to readers of this thread.

The paper is titled "Conservatism and Human Rights" by Priyanka Menon and appeared in The Harvard Political Review:

http://harvardpolitics.com/covers/conservatism-and-human-rights/

I want to quote here the conclusion of the piece:

Ultimately, adding tradition to the debate on human rights frames questions in terms of identity. The entirety of Burke’s claims rests on his identity as an Englishman; it is from this identity that he derives his rights as a citizen. Traditions, customs, and practices that have been handed down through the generations comprise this identity. Using these traditions is essential to the realization of human rights. Activists cannot be deemed illegitimate, because they are now part of a shared identity. Abuses become harder to ignore when they are seen as an attack on one’s own identity, rather than that of a removed other. Minorities, though distinct, still share some form of identity with the majority. And while tradition may not be the silver bullet that ends all human rights violations, acknowledging its usefulness brings the world one step closer to this end.

---End quotation

In general the author is positive regarding Burke's emphasis on tradition, and somewhat sympathetic to his criticism of "abstract rights." She views him as a conservative, though I think the point can be effectively disputed. Burke is a conservative only so far as this leaves room for Burke the reformer.

Comments invited.

H.G. Callaway

H.G.,

I agree with most of your reply to Lilliana.  I found some disagreement with the statement:

"The alternative is to see historical narratives as better or worse. At that point, to make a criticism of any given narrative one requires some alternative and a positive evaluation of it. The overstatement, in contrast appears as a resignation from judgment; and if we resign from judgment, then that amounts to merely going along with the reigning judgments: an excessively conservative attitude or effect."

Actually, I believe the idea of withholding judgment more progressive than conservative.  It is the trap of post-modernist thinking to remain non-judgmental, while believing one's own judgment is every bit as valid as another's.  Rather than going along with the reigning judgments, the post-modernist simply attempts to insert their own, even when void of factual standing.

While some view Burke as conservative, he was only partly so.  His view of government as the primary arbiter of morality broke from the Lockean "neo-classical liberalism" which forms the central strain of modern conservatism.   It is difficult to confuse traditionalism with neo-classical liberalism (today's conservatism), but we still do so because of they way we have shallowly stereotyped the belief systems and defined conservatism.  Remember, the conservatives at the time of Burke supported the King.  Burke, in fact, also provided some deference to the aristocracy, while still embracing Adam Smith.  

To remove some of the confusion we should note that Conservatism has several branches...neo-conservatism, libertarianism, Christian conservatism, and traditionalism (to name only a few).  The role of "natural law" pushed conservative Christians in the U.S. to the front of the abolition movement; stridently vying against governmental protection of slavery, as Wilberforce did in England.   Today's progressives are now the defenders of government's power to define the cultural moral compass, and, in that way, are more like Burke.  

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Mason,

I notice that Ramos-Collado is quite capable of speaking up for herself, when she sees the need of it.

In general, I think that supposed neutrality on contested topics and debates, like silence, has the net effect of allowing the dominant point of view to go unchallenged, and insofar, its conservative in effect--like "not rocking the boat." Neutrality in the face of irrational divisiveness is something else again.

People are entitled to select which issues to contest, of course, and there is nothing wrong with that in general terms. On occasion, however, it will look very strained, as in cultivating the powers-that-be, for the sake of advantage.

I'm glad to hear that progressives are giving up, finally, on "post-modernism," if such is the case.

I will allow the varieties of contemporary conservatives to sort themselves out as they will. As with the "progressives" some will like Burke and others not.

H.G. Callaway

Dear H.G.,

Not speaking for Ramos-Collado; extracting a portion of the argument for comment.

Unfortunately, post-modernism appears to be very much alive  and kicking throughout society, as evidenced by the supercilious acts that deeply divide our polity.  

Michael Crichton, in his fictional work Timeline, spoke of English kings in a way that made me recall the thoughts of Locke and Burke regarding the motivations of emperors.

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Mason,

As I see it, post-modernism amounts to a rejection of self-restraint on grounds of "higher" purpose. Its akin to unprincipled competition. This usually turns out to aim chiefly at self-advancement and self-aggrandizement, ingratiation with those promising extraneous rewards for towing the line, and overall an ample willingness to ignore the requirements and social-political constraints of the common good. Unscrupulous competition and insider trading hides behind promotion of insider favorites and denigration of those pointing out the flies in this particular ointment.

Rule by a king or emperor or dictator, designed to benefit the ruler, is traditionally called tyranny. Resisting post-modernist ideology often has quite similar motivations as found in the resistance against tyranny. The first thing always put in question is the idea that there could, in principle, be any better or worse in judgments and evaluations. That is a genuine threat to the unrestricted play of politics through networking, trading favors, and eliminating any reasonable opposition. The more reasonable the opposition, the greater is the antagonism to it --because it is a greater threat to the corrupt insider trading.

H.G. Callaway

Burke's rejection of natural law and human rights, as advocated by thinkers such as Locke and Rousseau

https://www.college.columbia.edu/core/content/edmund-burke-0

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Umachandran,

This looks like an interesting link. I wonder, though, if you might not give us something of your take on the material, or on our question generally. That might help guide readers in appreciating the value of the material that you suggest consulting.

Burke on Rousseau, and on human rights as conceived in the French Revolution has already got some attention on this thread, John Locke less so. As a "Whig," Burke might be thought to fall between "classical liberal" and "classical republican" thinkers, while, in my impression, Locke, though the chief philosopher of the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688-1689, is often thought of as a source or origin of "classical liberal," though, as later represented, say, by J.S. Mill. (The broad use of "liberal," as the name of a political philosophy, by the way, arose in the 19th-century, post Burke.)

It may be, as you say, that Burke rejected "natural law and human rights" --as advocated by Locke and Rousseau.

But in spite of that, I think we have already seen that Burke defends human rights and is influenced by the tradition of natural law--dating from Aristotle, through the Stoics, St. Thomas, the American founders, etc.

What is the import here of your link. Can you say a bit more? I think a bit of exposition would be helpful.

H.G. Callaway

Philadelphia, PA

Dear all,

A passage from the texts linked by Umachandran which I especially liked is the following:

In contrast to a vision of society as a collection of individuals held together by rational self-interest, Burke argued that society is actually constituted by feelings of affection and identification with one’s immediate social unit that expand outward to encompass the whole of the nation.  In this, Burke had similarities with Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), as well as, ironically enough, Mary Wollstonecraft’s insistence on the importance of the family for forming and educating the autonomous rational individual.

---End quotation

"Rational self-interest" is not without its importance, but is easily over-estimated in purely economic views of society; and it seems clear to me, at least, that no society can be organized on purely economic grounds alone. The passage points to our "immediate social units" and expanding circles from there outward. I cannot help but add to the emphasis on the family some needed emphasis on friends and associates, the school, the local community and the country as a whole. These are fundamental ligaments of any society which serve to hold it together and transmit values.

More could be said. But these concentric circles are a crucial element in Burke.

H.G. Callaway

Mainz, Germany

Dear all,

I've come across an additional piece, on line concerning Onora O'Neill, Edmund Burke and human rights. Its a short interview from the Irish Times from April of 2014:

http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/when-it-comes-to-human-rights-we-want-duty-free-1.1765372

The central idea put forward is perhaps that "If you take human rights seriously you must ask how they are to be delivered." This seems much in the spirit of Burke, and broaches the question of the relationship between Burke and contemporary discussions of human rights. How are rights related to obligations?

Have a look. Comments invited.

H.G. Callaway

Mainz, Germany

Dear all,

My new book, Edmund Burke, the Imperatives of Empire and the American Revolution, is now in print (as of 1 June) and making its way out to various book sellers, so far, in various European countries:

http://www.cambridgescholars.com/edmund-burke-the-imperatives-of-empire-and-the-american-revolution

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Edmund-Imperatives-Empire-American-Revolution/dp/1443890510?ie=UTF8&ref_=asap_bc

http://www.akademika.no/edmund-burke-the-imperatives-of-empire-and-the-american-revolution/h-g-callaway/9781443890519

http://www.lehmanns.de/shop/geisteswissenschaften/35114344-9781443890519-edmund-burke-the-imperatives-of-empire-and-the-american-revolution

Many thanks to all those who helped in thinking through the related topic of Burke on human rights.

As you will find at the publisher's webpage, the volume carries the following back cover description description:

Book Description:

Edmund Burke (1730–1797) was a friend and advocate of America during the political crisis of the 1760s and the 1770s, and he spoke out eloquently and forcefully in defense of the rights of the colonial subjects of the British empire – in America, Ireland and India alike. However, he is often best remembered for his extremely critical Reflections on the Revolution in France. The present volume is based on classic Burke, including his most famous writings and speeches on the American Crisis. Though his efforts at conciliation with the American colonies ultimately failed, Burke is widely remembered, studied and venerated by liberal and conservative thinkers alike, for his elucidation and criticism of the excesses of empire and political excesses generally. Irish-born, Burke made his career as a British Whig statesman and Member of Parliament, but he was also a powerful writer of philosophical works in high literary style.

In the present volume, Burke’s ideas, ideals and arguments are explored and set in their original historical and political context. The volume places the reader in a position to understand the similarities and contrasts between the political philosophy of the Whig ascendancy in British politics and the republican political philosophy of the American founders. What comes to the fore is Burke’s twin emphasis on continuity and justice, the anti-rationalism of his opposition to directly applying abstract political theory to policy decisions, the pluralism of peoples and public mores within the empire, the crucial roles of political representation in good government, and the fundamental importance of the consent of the governed.

Was Burke a friend or a foe of revolution? Was he a “liberal” or a “conservative”? To what degree did he accept the political ideals of the American founders? How could he both defend the American protests and reject the claims of the French Revolution? Thomas Jefferson’s “Summary View of the Rights of British America” is included in the volume for comparison and contrast. This book presents a deeper understanding of Burke’s political thought by exploring the similarities and contrasts with founding ideals of America’s republican tradition.

---End quotation

H.G. Callaway

Mainz, Germany

Dear all,

Please have a look at the following question:

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is_mutual_tolerance_a_needed_social_and_political_virtue

Your thoughtful contributions will be most appreciated.

H.G. Callaway

Philadelphia, PA

Dear all,

Please have a look at the following question--relevant to Edmund Burke and his writings:

https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_were_the_causes_of_the_American_Revolution

Your thoughtful and consider contributions are invited.

H.G. Callaway

Philadelphia, PA

Dear all,

I've come across a fine, well written piece highly relevant to the present question and thread of discussion.

From David Bromwich, LRB, “What are we allowed to say?”

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n18/david-bromwich/what-are-we-allowed-to-say

Two contradictory thoughts now dominate the Anglo-American approach to feelings in the context of public debate. For the speaker, feelings must be restrained – a neutral style of rational euphemism is recommended. On the other hand, the emotion felt by the listener in response to a speech must be treated as authoritative, unarguable, closed to correction or modification by other witnesses. ‘The group which feels hurt is the ultimate arbiter of whether a hurt has taken place’; so, too, the person who listens and testifies on behalf of his or her group. Reproach from a traumatised listener admits of no answer, only apology, even though apologies are only interesting in proportion as they are spontaneous and warranted. The apology that is demanded and forked out has the moral stature of hush money: it makes a fetish of insincerity. With some help from the jargon of political and religious heresy, one would say these are not so much apologies as formal acts of self-criticism and recantation. Thus far, they have mostly been extorted in communities the size of a guild or a college. At the same time the rigour of exclusion within these mini-communities is itself a cause of the near autistic breakdown of political speech in America.

---End quotation

The entire piece is available on-line, and I would like to recommend it to interested readers. As some of you may know, Bromwich has done much good work on Edmund Burke, and because of this, his argument for freedom of speech is of special interest here.

Have a look. Its no easy read, but well worth the effort.

H.G. Callaway

http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/06/generation-snowflake-how-we-train-our-kids-to-be-censorious-cry-babies/  

Philadelphia, PA

Dear all, 

Readers of this thread may find the following question of interest:

https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_is_authoritarianism_What_are_its_varieties_and_sources

Please have a look. 

H.G. Callaway

Philadelphia, PA

Dear all,

I would like to recommend your attention to the following article:

“Liberalism and Empire in Nineteenth-Century International Law” by Andrew Fitzmaurice, Professor of History at the University of Sydney. This paper appeared in American History Review in February 2012.

See:

http://graduateinstitute.ch/files/live/sites/iheid/files/sites/international_history_politics/users/stratto9/public/Fitzmaurice.pdf

I quote from p. 123.

The skeptics of empire among international jurists were not motivated by philanthropy or humanitarianism. Indeed, most philanthropists and humanitarians have been correctly portrayed as apologists for empire.3 The skeptics were concerned with liberty rather than sovereignty. Freedom was as important in the liberal tradition as sovereignty, and the pursuit of freedom was frequently in tension with the demands of the state. For these jurists, empire posed a threat to the fragile freedoms that had been secured by the modern revolutions. Although those revolutions had, they argued, overthrown absolutism, empire created a space in which arbitrary rule and absolutism could return and could then be repatriated to Europe.

---End quotation

Generally, this paper is a contribution to the discussion of nineteenth-century liberal imperialism, and it emphasizes the contributions of liberal critics of empire in international law. I see the argument in this passage as completely parallel to Edmund Burke's criticisms of the first, 18th century British empire and its policies in North America, Ireland and India.

Clearly, there was this phenomenon of “liberal imperialism,”and many other scholars have shown similar results. But the present author aims to show that there were also liberal critics of imperialism, particularly in international law. Of course, we realize, too, that international law is generally much weaker than national law. Even those less interested in the historical discussion may want to read the first few pages of this paper.

Comments and discussion invited.

H.G. Callaway

Philadelphia, PA

Dear all, 

I've come across a short article on Edmund Burke, written by the British politician, Jesse Norman which I would like to call to your attention. The newspaper piece appealed in the Telegraph, about the time that Norman published his recent book on Burke, Edmund Burke, Philosopher, Politician Prophet. 

See:

https://www.harpercollins.co.uk/9780007489640/edmund-burke

I read Norman's book, among many others, in producing my own volume on Burke and the American crisis of the 1760s and 1770s. 

See:

http://www.cambridgescholars.com/edmund-burke-the-imperatives-of-empire-and-the-american-revolution

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/297758694_EDMUND_BURKE_THE_IMPERATIVES_OF_EMPIRE_AND_THE_AMERICAN_REVOLUTION_AN_INTERPRETATION

The following passage from Norman's Telegraph article struck me as especially interesting:

In his own time, Burke regarded as his greatest achievement his campaign to restrain the crony capitalism of the East India Company, and to insist on the accountability of private power to public authority. In effect, he offers a profound critique of the market fundamentalism now prevalent in Western society. But this critique comes not from the Left of the political spectrum, but from the Right. Markets are not idolised, but treated as cultural artifacts mediated by trust and tradition. Capitalism becomes not a one-size-fits-all ideology of consumption, but a spectrum of different models to be evaluated on their own merits.

As Burke shows us, the individual is not simply a compendium of wants; human happiness is not simply a matter of satisfying individual wants; and the purpose of politics is not to satisfy the interests of individuals living now. It is to preserve a social order which addresses the needs of generations past, present and future.

The paradox of Burke’s conservatism is thus that, properly understood, it is intrinsically modest, while extreme liberalism appears to promote arrogance and selfishness. Burke’s conservatism constrains rampant individualism and the tyranny of the majority, while extreme liberalism threatens to worsen their effects. Burke tempts us to the heretical thought that the route to a better politics may not be through managerial claims – “we can do it better” – but through a deep change of viewpoint.

---End quotation

See the full article at the following address:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/10046562/Edmund-Burke-the-great-conservative-who-foresaw-the-discontents-of-our-era.html

Although I suppose that Norman did not foresee the Brexit vote, he is clearly signaling in these passages something of the recent shifts in British politics. Whether readers have any great sympathy with the British Conservatives or not, the articles provides some insight into conservative criticism of the excesses of markets, capitalism and the kind of unbound individualism associated with great corporate power. 

It is worth noting in some contrast with Norman, that Edmund Burke's thought has often been associated with the tradition of liberal thought, especially in GB and the English-speaking world. But given Burke's criticism of the excesses of the British East India Company, the kind of "liberalism" which Burke can be thought to fairly represent is not 19th-century liberal imperialism. 

H.G. Callaway

Book EDMUND BURKE, THE IMPERATIVES OF EMPIRE AND THE AMERICAN REV...

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Laird,

As usual, you are way off topic. 

Apparently you think that your worthy aims must justify any means of transgressing relevance and ignoring the topic at hand. That is simply unacceptable, IMHO. Postings and issue that are clearly relevant seem not to interest you. 

Go start an appropriate question and see what response you get to it. 

H.G. Callaway

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Pedersen & readers, 

As you may know, there is a recent book on Paine and Burke, Yuval Levin 2014, The Great Debate, Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left. 

See the review at:

http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/683233

Thanks for the interesting, related comments. 

People wonder about how Burke could be so supportive of the American Revolution and yet so critical of the French Revolution. Part of the explanation is the remarkable fact that the American Revolution brought along the more conservative patriots: as with Washington, John Adams and Alexander Hamilton. It started as a demand for the "rights of Englishmen." The French Revolution chiefly wanted to destroy, not only the church, but the conservatives of French society. Again, the American Tories were allowed to leave --or sometimes driven out, but there was nothing of the prominence of the guillotine. 

Still, in the end, the new American republic was more that of Jefferson and Madison and not the one that Hamilton wanted. Burke shows us something of the original values of the American Revolution --including those of the more conservative patriots, the "good Whigs." 

H.G. Callaway

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Laird, 

Once again, you are seriously off-topic. You are yet to convince me that you know much at all about Edmund Burke--or human rights for that matter--which you seem to equate with arbitrary interventions taking advantage and abusing the openness of this discussion forum. 

You wrote:

Whatever Burke said, I am against IT . And I can't be wrong. He is dead and I am alive. End of the story.

---End quotation

An absurdity, and obviously intended as such. For example, Burke advocated the repeal of the British Stamp Act on the American colonies. Did you mean that you are against that 18th-century Act of the British Parliament? Or perhaps you weren't thinking of that? Maybe you are just shouting out some frustrations? 

BTW: Although, Burke was in fact an Anglican, the 18th-century British constitution which he defended, and the Whig ascendancy generally, contained much which derived from the earlier republican or Commonwealth era --which was not very Anglican and instead non-conformist.

I regard appeal to the authority of the established Church of England (or the Anglican confession) or aversion to it as quite beside the point of this question and thread of discussion. 

H.G. Callaway

Mainz, Germany

Dear all,

I've been looking at some reviews of Richard Bourke's 2015 book, Empire and Revolution, The Political Life of Edmund Burke, and both the book and some of the reviews may help us along with the present question. 

http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10567.html

Here follows a short quotation from the review written by Gavin Murray-Miller, from Cardiff. the review was published on-line by H-Net Reviews: 

For Burke, the “spirit of liberty” was a

world historical phenomenon guiding modern society.

It signified the progressive move toward impartial justice,

the equitable application of law, and constitutional

rule over the despotism and tyranny of the past. This

“spirit of liberty” was contrasted with what Burke labeled

the “spirit of conquest,” a term closely associated

with the formal practice of empire. The so-called Spanish

model of imperialism relied on force, coercion, and

domination and was incompatible with modern society

as Burke understood it. Burke began his political career

as Britain’s empire was expanding, and it was, therefore,

inevitable that it would come to play an important role

in his polemics. According to Burke, imperialism posed

a threat to the “spirit of liberty” in general and had the potential

to alter established constitutional elements within

Britain if left unchecked. In this respect, Burke intended

to frame a brand of empire that was consistent with liberty,

believing it could exercise a civilizing force through

good administration and an appreciation for customary

arrangements. Indeed, it was on these grounds alone that

empire could be justified, a claim that would shape his positions

on the American colonies, India, and Ireland over his career.

---End quotation

See:

http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=46705

I particularly like the contrast highlighted in this passage between "the spirit of liberty" and " the spirit of conquest," which helps make the point that Burke and the Whigs saw "the spirit of conquest" implicit in the expansion of the 18th-century British empire as a threat to liberty at home. This is the political basis of the sympathy between the British Whig ascendancy and the American Revolution. In contrast, Burke saw the French Revolution as more akin to the spirit of conquest. I think it follows, on this view of the matter, that we should be especially wary whenever large-scale commercial expansion looks to turn into something more like military-commercial expansion. 

H.G. Callaway

Philadelphia, PA

Dear all, 

I would like to recommend the following paper of mine, which is the Introduction to my recent book on Edmund Burke and the American crisis of the late 18th century:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/317040170_Edmund_Burke_the_Whig_Ascendancy_and_the_Fate_of_Empire

I offer here interpretation of Burke's political thought and interpretation of the American Revolution. Part of my purpose in making it available is to encourage historically based comparison, since it is plausible to see the American crisis as a consequence of the first great episode of Western globalization --culminating in the American Revolution and a bit later, the Napoleonic Wars. 

Comments invited.

H.G. Callaway

Chapter Edmund Burke, the Whig Ascendancy and the Fate of Empire

Philadelphia, PA

Dear all,

I have just come across a new review of my book, Edmund Burke, the Imperatives of Empire and the American Revolution--which appeared in Vol. 27, of Studies in Burke and his times, 2018

See:

https://kirkcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/SBHT-27-2018.pdf

You will find, via this link, the pdf of the entire issue of the journal.

I am grateful to the editor and reviewer for the kind attention.

The book itself is available on-line from various book sellers and the publisher:

https://www.cambridgescholars.com/edmund-burke-the-imperatives-of-empire-and-the-american-revolution

H.G. Callaway

Informative replies, I am learned!!

In modern times, we have no right to our rights.