I’ve decided that there’s no better way to celebrate the storming of the Bastille and the subsequent bloody reign of terror than by posting the seminal work of Edmund Burke on the subject. Burke was a member of the British Parliament at the time of both the American and the French revolutions. He was known as one of the strongest supporters of colonial liberty at the time, but an ardant critic of the French revolution.
His reasons are contained in his 1790 work Reflections on the Revolution in France, which has become one of his most famous pieces. In it, he traces why the American Revolution led to increased liberty while the French Revolution develoved into bloody anarchy. He points out that the American Revolution was based upon the traditions of the Enlightenment – limited government, individual liberty, and open markets. However, the French Revolution sought to overthrow everything about the society, essentially throwing out the good with the bad. His work is one that every student of politics and human nature should read, as it answers the important question what makes a revolution just and what makes a revolution turn to anarchy?
Click here to read Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France. Link provided by Harvard Classics.
