Further Reflections on the Revolution in France

3. A LETTER TO A MEMBER OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY

Reflect_001-050.indd 27 12/11/07 12:47:16 AM 3 A LETTER TO A MEMBER OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY May 1791 Le recipient ofA Letter to a Member of the National Assembly was Fran~ois-Louis-Thibaut de Menonville. The opening paragraphs, which refer to Menonville's response (Carr. Copeland 6:162-169) to Burke's Reflections, acknowledge and then dismiss most ofMenonville's criticisms. By thetime hewrote A Letter, inJanuary IJ9I, Burkehad come to a deep understanding ofthe modern revolutionary mind and its method ofdefending itself: atrocities were to be set down as "excesses" provoked by its opponents; revolutionary speakers were not to be held to thesame ethicalstandards as others, since their motives were, after all, the best; and no amount ofactual suffering in the present could call into question the revolutionary's hopefor a brightfuture. Burke clearly believed that therevolutionary enterprise was internationalin character and had to be opposed byforce. He was soon to be bitterly disappointed by the irresolute and fractious European coalitions formed for this purpose. This work isfamous for its consideration ofJean-Jacques Rousseau and is noteworthy as wellfor its opposition to the new-modeling of education and sentiment which Rousseau's works, especially Emile, portended. Burke had begun reading Rousseau by 1759at the latest, when he reviewed the Letter .. . toM. d'Alembertfor the Annual Register. He refers in that review to two ofthe Discourses. In 1762, he reviewed Emile. Asfor Rousseau himself, his highlypub- [27] Reflect_001-050.indd 28 12/11/07 12:47:19 AM licized trip to England betweenJanuary 1766and May 1767-especially his quarrel with his host, David Hume-impressed theEnglish with his vanity and ingratitude. In A Letter, and continuing in An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs, one can see Burke allying himselfwith the ancients, with classicalmodes ofeducation andfeeling, against the Enlightenment . [28] Reflect_001-050.indd 29 12/11/07 12:47:19 AM A LETTER TO A MEMBER OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY SIR, May IJ9I I had the honour to receive your letter of the r 7th of November last, in which, with some exceptions, you are pleased to consider favourably the letter I have written on the affairs of France. I shall ever accept any mark ofapprobation, attended with instruction, with more pleasure than general and unqualified praises. The latter can serve only to flatter our vanity ; the former, whilst it encourages us to proceed, may help to . . tmprove us m our progress. Some of the errors you point out to me in my printed letter are really such. One only I find to be material. It is corrected in the edition which I take the liberty of sending to you. As to the cavils which may be made on some part of my remarks, with regard to the gradations in your new constitution , you observejustly, that they do not affect the substance of my objections. Whether there be a round more or less in the ladder of representation, by which your workmen ascend from their parochial tyranny to their federal anarchy, when the whole scale is false, appears to me of little or no importance . I published my thoughts on that constitution, that my countrymen might be enabled to estimate the wisdom of the [29] Reflect_001-050.indd 30 12/11/07 12:47:20 AM [30] A LETTER TO A MEMBER OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY plans which were held out to their imitation. I conceived that the true characterofthose plans would be best collected from the committee appointed to prepare them. I thought that the scheme of their building would be better comprehended in the design of the architects than in the execution of the masons . It was not worth my reader's while to occupy himself with the alterations by which bungling practice corrects absurd theory. Such an investigation would be endless: because every day's past experience of impracticability has driven, and every day's future experience will drive, those men to new devices as exceptionable as the old; and which are no otherwise worthy of observation than as they give a daily proofof the delusion of their promises, and the falsehood of their professions. Had I followed all these changes, my letter would have been only a gazette oftheir wanderings; ajournal of their march from error to error, through a dry dreary desart, unguided by the lights of heaven, or by the contrivance which wisdom has...