Summary: You know, the French Revolution was a mess in the end.
Commentary: Obviously, getting rid of the king is a good idea. But Burke isn't entirely wrong (this is not the first time we've read someone being mad about the proles getting uppity) that there would be issues. (The Reign of Terror wasn't for a few more years, and I'm not up enough on my history of the time to pinpoint how badly things were going at this point.)
Without a stronger background, it's hard for me to say if Burke is simply an authoritarian supporting monarchism, or if he saw how things were going to go and made some good points. I lean more towards the former from his tone here (there's a lot of defense of what we'll call "reasonable oppression"). I think the public (at least here in the US) generally accepts the Frev as virtuous, but it's a lot messier than I think it's presented.
Denying, as I am well warranted to do, that the nobility had any considerable share in the oppression of the people, in cases in which real oppression existed, I am ready to admit that they were not without considerable faults and errors. A foolish imitation of the worst part of the manners of England, which impaired their natural character, without substituting in its place what perhaps they meant to copy, has certainly rendered them worse than formerly they were. Habitual dissoluteness of manners, continued beyond the pardonable period of life, was more common amongst them than it is with us; and it reigned with the less hope of remedy, though possibly with something of less mischief, by being covered with more exterior decorum. They countenanced too much that licentious philosophy which has helped to bring on their ruin. There was another error amongst them more fatal. Those of the commons who approached to or exceeded many of the nobility in point of wealth were not fully admitted to the rank and estimation which wealth, in reason and good policy, ought to bestow in every country,—though I think not equally with that of other nobility. The two kinds of aristocracy were too punctiliously kept asunder: less so, however, than in Germany and some other nations.
No comments:
Post a Comment