BURKE’S POLITICS AND THE LAW OF NATURE

365 Pages·018.122 MB·English

by  STANLIS, PETER JAMES

BURKE’S POLITICS AND THE LAW OP NATURE
by
Peter J. Stanlis
A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy in the
University of Michigan
1951
Committee in charge:
Professor Louis I. Bredvold, Chairman
Associate Professor John Arthos
Professor William Frankena
Associate Professor Henry V, Ogden
Professor Paul Spurlin
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
PREPAGE
It has been my purpose in this thesis to describe in de­
tail the ultimate moral and legal basis of Burke's political
theory. Since 1867, when John Llorley's first book on Burke
appeared, Burke's complex political thought has been examined
by many competent scholars, and the consensus of opinion has
been that his political philosophy is founded in a conserva­
tive Utilitarianism, My investigations of Burke's speeches,
correspondence and works, and of the replies written to his
Reflections, have led me to conclude that Burke's political
theory is centered not in Utilitarianism, but in the classi­
cal Law of Nature. I have used the term '‘politics" in a
-dual sense— first as it applies to Burke's handling of the
particular issues and ideas he encountered during his career
as a practical statesman, and secondly in an Aristotelian
sense, as it applies to his political theory. This particular
and general use of "politics" is necessary and warranted, be­
cause of the close fusion of practice and theory in Burke's
action and thought.
In the first three chapters I have tried to determine
the extent to which, in every important political issue, Burke
appealed to the classical Lav/ of Nature. Throughout these
chapters, in describing the theory of the Law of Nature and
Burke's appeals to it in practical affairs, I have attempted
to set both Burke's theory and practice in an historical
frame of reference, I have found it necessary in chapter four
ii
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
to distinguish Burke’s conception and application of th9
Law of Nature from the appeals to "natural rights" of some
of his contemporary critics. This distinction is most
clearly expressed in the antithesis between "nature" and
"art," as found in the replies to Burke's Reflections.
Among some of Burke's English predecessors and contemporaries
who appealed to "Nature," there were other important digres­
sions from the classical Law of Nature, particularly in the
confusion between a "descriptive" and "normative" conception
of Nature, but I have had to omit this side of the problem.
Finally, in the last two chapters, I have tried to show how
fundamental the classical Law of Nature is in Burke's theories
of human nature and of Church and State.
The best available edition of Burke's letters is The
Correspondence of Edmund Burke. ed,, Earl Fitzwilliam (London,
l8i|lj.), in four volumes, and I have supplemented this with The
Epistolary Correspondence of Edmund Burke, ed., Dr. French
Laurence (London, 1827). Throughout my thesis I have called
the first collection of letters Correspondencet and the second
Laurence Correspondence. Other references to Burke's letters,
drawn largely from the Bohn edition of Burke's works, are iden­
tified as they are used. All the references designated Speeches
are taken from The Speeches of Edmund Burke (London, I8l6 ), in
four volumes. Throughout my study I have used the Bohn edition
of Burke's Work3 (London, I85I1), in six volumes, prefaced by
the fifth edition of James Prior's Life of Burke. and as an
aid to the reader, in my quotations and references I have
iii
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
always identified the particular work and page rather than the
volume in which it appears.
It is a pleasure for me to acknowledge my deep obliga­
tions to Professor Louis I. Bredvold, Chairman of my thesis
committee, and to the committee members, Professors Henry V.
Ogden, Paul Spurlin, John Arthds and William Frankena, for
their many friendly and helpful criticisms of each chapter.
Peter J. Stanlls
Detroit, Michigan
April, 19f?l
iv
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
CONTENTS
Preface......................... • . . ii
I. The Theory of the Law of Nature • • • • • • • 1
II. Burke and the Law of Nature..................26
III. Burke and the Law of Nations • • • • • • • • 91
IV. The Antithesis of Natural and Civil Society:
Burke and the English ’Natural Rights’ Tra­
dition . . • • • • • • • • • ............. lf?7
V. Burke’s Theory of Human Nature • • • • • • • 221
VI. Burke’s Theory of Church and State • • . • • 296
VII. Conclusion • • • • • • 3U-Q
Bibliography............... 35>3
v
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
BURKE’S POLITICS AND THE LAW OP NATURE
Chapter I
The Theory of the Law of Nature
1 • The Importance of Burke1s Reflections.
II. Burke, Mackintosh and the Law of Nature.
III. The Law of Nature and political sovereignty.
The French Revolution touched off many bitter contro­
versies about the nature of civil society, of man, and of the
moral and legal basis of Church and State, but perhaps none
of these controversies is as stimulating and profitable for
scholars in the history of ideas as that contained in Burke’s
Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), and some of
the many replies that were written to it. Burke was the first
public man to realize that the revolution was far more than
an alteration in the government of France. In November, 1792,
Burke wrote to his son that the revolution was "an event which
has nothing to match it, or in the least to resemble it, in
history."1 He felt that the revolution violated "the whole
system of policy on which the general state of Europe has
o
hitherto stood," that the revolutionists tried to make
themselves "paramount to every known principle of public law
in Europe," and that they sought to establish "principles
1Correspondence. IV, 24. See also, pp. 82-83, 208 and 211.
2
Ibid.. Appendix, p. 519.
^Ibid.. p. 544.
1
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
2
subversive of the whole political, civil, and religious
A
system of Europe." In 1796 Burke summarized his impressions
of the strange and powerful effect the revolution had produced
on menfs imaginations:
Out of the tomb of the murdered monarchy in France has
arisen a vast, tremendous, unformed spectre, in a far
more terrific guise them any which ever yet have over­
powered the imagination, and subdued the fortitude of
man. Going straight forward to its end, unappaled by
peril, unchecked by remorse, despising all common max­
ims and all common means, that hideous phantom over­
powered those who could not believe it was possible she
could at all exist. • • .5
For Burke the revolution was "a total departure . . . from
every one of the ideas and usages, religious, legal, moral,
or social, of this civilized world;" it had "made a schism
with the whole universe." In short, It was "a revolution
in dogma," the practical culmination of all the emancipat­
ing doctrines and sentiments released since the Protestant
ReformatIon--the ever increasing secularism of the Renais­
sance, the dynamic Interaction and growth of empirical and
speculative philosophy, of social sensibility, and of the use
of the scientific method for "progress Among other reasons,
4Ibid., p. 647.
^Regicide Peace (1796), p. 155. See also. Morley. Edmund
Burke: A Historical Study (London, 1867), pp. 264-2551
6Ibi&*«. p. 215. See also, pp. 219, 232-234, 243-245, 304-
305 and 415; Morley, Edmund Burke: A Historical Study, p. 236.
7For Burke’s comparison of the Revolution with the Reforma­
tion, see French Affairs, pp. 350-352. See also, Morley, Ed­
mund Burke: A Historical Study, pp. 225-240, 273-274 and 551.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
the Reflections is Important because In this work Burke
stripped to their essential forms the theories of civil so­
ciety, human nature and Church and State, which had caused
the revolution, pointed out the fallacies and dangers of these
theories, and by advancing an alternative social theory ral­
lied public opinion in Britain and Europe against the revo­
lution*
If we consider only Burke's immediate practical inten­
tion, his Reflections was perhaps the most successful book
of the English Enlightenment, and it was almost totally op­
posed to the prevailing spirit of the age. So clearly and
eloquently did Burke analyze the basic issues and social the­
ories raised by the revolution, that the people of Britain
were almost immediately divided into two distinct groups for
or against it.® The first British edition of the Reflections
sold 12,000 copies in the first month; in less than a year
there were eleven editions, and by 1796 about 30,000 copies
had been sold.^ For that era, when a book was circulated
among many readers and was frequently read to large public
groups, this was a phenomenal achievement. So remarkable was
its immediate effect, that the Reflect ions became the focal
®For the division of public opinion between Burke and his
opponents, see Samuel Bernstein, "English Reactions to the
French Revolution," Sci. and Soc., 9 No. 2 (1945), pp. 147-171
®See Thomas W. Copeland, Our F.mlnnnt Friend Edmund Burke
(Yale Univ. Press, 1949), p. 191; Morley. Burke (tiondon.
1879), pp. 151-155. -----
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
4
point for all private and public discussions of the revolu­
tion. Wilberforce, the ardent advocate of emancipation for
slaves, praised Burke as the man vho "had stood between the
living and the dead until the plague was stayed."1° Reynolds
and Gibbon greatly admired the Reflections, the latter writ­
ing of it: "Burke's book is a most admirable medicine against
the French disease. I admire his eloquence; I approve his
politics; I adore his chivalry; and I can almost forgive his
reverence for church establishments."^ Of course the King
said in public that it was "a very good book," which "every
gentleman ought to read." In November, 1796, Earl Fltz-
william wrote to Burke and estimated the practical effect his
Reflections and other writings on French affairs had produced
in Britain: "You, my dear Burke, by the exertion of your
great powers, have carried three-fourths of the public. • . .
Your labours . . . have produced [an] effect in the country
beyond expectation."^ The French translation, reputed to
have been done in part by the Imprisoned Louis XVI, enjoyed
an even greater contemporary triumph throughout Europe:
Le succes de cette publication avait ete Immense; trente
mille exemplalres s'etaient vendus dans une seule annee,
et tous les peuples de 1'Europe avalent pu lire cette
10Wilberforce, Diary. I, 284.
^Quoted by James Prior, Life of Burke (London, 1854),
p. 515.
12Burke's Correspondence. IV, 356 and 359.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
5
oeuvre remarquable, traduite dans toutes las langues das
son apparition. . . . La premiere traduction francalse,
faita d'apres la 3*- edition anglaise, parut a Pa^is an
1790. La manuscrit fut distribu^, par parties, a trois
Imprimeriea at imprime*en huit joursOn fit cinq
editions de cetta traduction do 1790 a la fin da 1791.13
For writing the Reflections. Catherine the Great of Russia
and King Stanislas of Poland sent letters of congratulations
to Burke. Among the revolutionists in Franca, Burke was of
course strongly denounced: Mirabeau spoke warmly against the
Reflections in the National Assembly, and Jean-Baptiste Cloots,
the eccentric Prussian Jacobin, sent Burke an ironic invitation
to France: "Quittez votre lie, mon cher Burke; venez en France,
si vous voulez jouir du plus magnlfique spectacle dont l'en-
tendement du philosophe puisse $tre frappe."^ When the four­
teenth edition of the Reflections appeared, Romllly, a mod­
erate man who for a while sympathized with the revolution,
"wondered whether Burke was not rather ashamed of his suc-
cess. From every class of people and many parts of
1 g
Europe Burke1s book provoked a grand chorus of praise and
censure which reverberated through all discussions of the
French Revolution.
^®Rene Bazin, "Edmund Burke et la Revolution," Revue de
L1 Anjou (Nouvelle Serie), Jan., 1882, Tome Quatrieme, p• 3*3•
^Jean-Baptiste Cloots, Addresse dfun Prusslen a un
Anglais (Paris, 1790), p. IS"! See also, p. 49. ForTJurke
on Cloots, see Speeches. IV, 77-78.
•^^orley, Burke, p. 153.
^■®See Robert H. Murray. Edmund Burke (London. 1931).
pp. 372-374. -----------
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.