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Edmund Burke's View of History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

John C. Weston Jr
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Extract

A study of Edmund Burke's theory of history has not, to my knowledge, been undertaken before. There are two principal justifications for it. The first is that since Burke is, as some have claimed, “the principal founder” of the Romantic theory of history, his theory of history, as one aspect of the complicated association of thought and feeling called Romanticism, is important in the history of ideas. The second reason is that almost all of Burke's politics depends on his view of history or, at least, can be explained by it.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , April 1961 , pp. 203 - 229
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1961

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References

1 The following is roughly the relation of this essay to the standard essays on Burke's thought: (1) This essay opposes the view of Morley, John in Edmund Burke: A Historical Study (London, 1867), pp. 20–23Google Scholar, 150–151, 309–310, that Burke is a kind of utilitarian, and goes beyond Morley to explain, by reference to Burke's views of history, why he, pp. 49–50, finds Burke always confounding “existing usages and traditions … with a moral and just equilibrium.” (2) John MacGunn, perhaps the best commentator on Burke's politics, treats of Burke's view of history more extensively than any other writer; but many of Burke's historical notions are not made explicit, and I think the present essay solves more clearly than does MacCunn's the central problem: the reconciliation of Burke's notions of “organic” and providential national development and of man's mind as a proximate efficient cause of change. See his The Political Philosophy of Burke (London, 1913), pp. 50–67Google Scholar, 86–91, 101–103. (3) Alfred Cobban believes that in Burke the “reason [of the rationalists] is replaced by utility, and for utility Burke reads history.” See Edmund Burke and the Revolt against the Eighteenth Century (London, 1929), pp. 85–96Google Scholar, where he briefly formulates Burke's view of history. This essay, in emphasizing Burke's belief in free will, denies Cobban's claim that Burke says “what has been must have been ordained by God,” that is, it denies Cobban's claim that Burke equated Providence and history. (4) It refutes Charles E. Vaughan's principal contention that “it was because Burke never reached the conception of progress that the principles of justice and expediency jostle each other uneasily in his system.” See Studies in the History of Political Philosophy (Manchester, 1939), II, 59Google Scholar. It does so by developing Burke's theory of progress, which relates abstract right and historical development; it refutes Vaughan's contention that Burke's “appeal to the Constitution is only one form among many of the arguments from expedience” (ibid., p. 13). (5) This essay amplifies Ernest Barker's fine but brief account of what he calls the “ultimate foundation of Burke's philosophy,” Burke's notion of providential historical development. See Essays on Government (Oxford, 1945), pp. 233–34Google Scholar. It also explains what Barker means by designating Burke's thought as “historical romanticism” (ibid., p. 226). (6) This essay takes partial issue with Strauss, Leo, Natural Right and History (Chicago, 1953)Google Scholar, by denying that Burke failed to recognize the “ultimate superiority of theory,” that is, natural right, and by denying that Burke “secularized” history, that is, saw in all events the will of God fulfilled (ibid., pp. 311–12, 317–18). (7) This essay explains how Burke's moral values, which Parkin, Charles in The Moral Basis of Burke's Political Thought (Cambridge University Press, 1956)Google Scholar emphasizes, are realized in the historical process. Parkin develops correctly but insufficiently Burke's view of history (ibid., pp. 121–23, 125–30); this essay may be considered as an explanation of the first seven lines in the last chapter of Parkin's book.

2 Fueter, Eduard, Histoire de I'historiographie moderne, trans. Jeanmaire, Emile (Paris, 1914), pp. 524–25Google Scholar. See also Croce, Benedetto, Theory and History of Historiography, trans. Ainslie, D. (London, 1921), p. 31Google Scholar.

8 Burke, Edmund, Correspondence of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, eds. William, Charles, Fitzwilliam, Earl, and Bourke, Sir Richard (London, 1844), II, 162–63 — henceforth cited as CorrGoogle Scholar.

4 The Works of the Right Honorable Edmund Burke (Boston, 1871), IX, 350; henceforth the volume and page numbers will be put within parentheses in the text and the edition cited as Works in the footnotesGoogle Scholar.

5 For further indications of his recognition of the enlightenment and refinement of his age see Works, II, 406.

6 Hansard's Parliamentary History, XIX, 202; XXII, 222 (henceforth cited as Hansard); and especially Works, II, 389–90.

7 Hansard, XXI, 720.

8 Corr., IV, 138.

9 Hansard, XXX, 642–43.

10 Ibid., XXVII, 1231; R. M. Milnes, ed., “Extracts of Mr. Burke's Table Talk at Crewe Hall,” Philobiblon Society Miscellanies (London, 1862), VII 49.

11 See also ibid., IV, 150.

12 Hansard, XXVII, 1231.

13 Ibid., XXIV, 1266; Corr., II, 34.

14 Quoted in MacCunn, , op. cit., p. 99Google Scholar. For a fine discussion of Burke's view of providence in history, see Barker, , op. cit., pp. 233–34Google Scholar.

15 Annual Register, II, 38.

16 Payne, E. J., Burke: Selected Works (Oxford, 1892), III, 354–55, suggests the identity of the allusions in the last two sentences in order as Pericles (death), Coriolanus (disgust), Pitt the Elder (retreat), the Constable of Bourbon under Francis I (disgrace), Arnold of Winkelreid on the field of Sempach (common soldier), Hannibal (child), Joan of Arc (girl at the door)Google Scholar.

17 Corr., II, 48–49.

18 Gilson, J. P., ed., Correspondence of Edmund Burke & William Windham (Cambridge University Press, 1910), II, 170Google Scholar.

19 Corr., III, 204.

20 See also ibid., III, 156.

21 See also Works, VI, 27.

22 Corr., IV, 290: “Nature, in desperate diseases [of the state] frequently does most when she is left entirely to herself.”

23 For example, Vaughan, , op. cit., II, 26Google Scholar; these misconceptions are noticed by Cobban, , op. cit., pp. 90–91Google Scholar.

24 See MacCunn, , op. cit., pp. 60–62Google Scholar, and Barker, , op. cit., p. 233, for corroboration of this interpretation. For Burke's explicit and extended denial of the organic view of history, see Works, V, 124, 234–35, and Hansard, XVII, 669Google Scholar.

25 Lovejoy, A. O., Essays in the History of Ideas (Baltimore, 1948), pp. 79–82Google Scholar.

26 Collingwood, R. G., The Idea of History (Oxford, 1946), p. 82.Google Scholar

27 Quoted by Becker, C. L., The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers (New Haven, 1932), p. 95Google Scholar.

28 Fletcher, F. T. H., Montesquieu and English Politics (1750–1800) (London, 1939), p. 269Google Scholar.

29 Stephen, Leslie, History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1881), II, 211Google Scholar.

30 Cassirer, Ernst, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment, trans. Koelln, F. C. A. and Pettegrove, J. P. (Boston, 1955), pp. 218–19Google Scholar.

31 Collingwood, , op. cit., pp. 82–85Google Scholar; Becker, , op. cit., 97–98Google Scholar.

32 Collingwood, , op. cit., p. 85Google Scholar.

33 Annual Register, I, 263.

34 For another typical example of organic metaphor used for this purpose, see Works, I, 444.

30 In another essay, as yet unpublished, I show the political implications of Burke's view of history and discuss fully his concept of natural right.

36 Esprit des his, xi. 6

37 For an almost exact repetition of this sentence in Burke's Abridgment of the English History, see Works, VII, 479.

38 See Works, V, 319, for a similar view of the origins of European laws and governments.

39 Hansard, XXVII, 1231.

40 Wraxall, Sir Nathaniel, The Historical and the Posthumous Memoirs of Sir Nathaniel William Wraxall: 1772–1884, ed. Wheatley, Henry B. (New York, 1884), V, 212Google Scholar.

41 Corr., I, 334.

42 Also Hansard, XXVII, 823.

43 Corr., IV, 516–24. This is a fragmentary dialogue, written early in Burke's career, between a Whig and a Tory about the constitutional policies of the Stuarts and about the Whig Settlement. Burke unquestionably identifies his own with the Whig view.

44 Hansard, XXVII, 823.

45 Ibid., XXIX, 1321.

46 Works, IV, 318–21, 352–53, 426; V, 167; Con., IV, 24, 219; Hansard, XXX, 70, 72.

47 Corr., IV, 138; see also ibid., p. 220.

48 Reports of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, Fourth Report (1874), p. 529.

49 Milnes, , ed., Table-talk at Crewe Hall, op. cit., p. 24Google Scholar.

50 Baring, Mrs. Henry, ed., The Diary of the Right Hon. William. Windham (London, 1866), p. 330; Burke-Windham Correspondence, p. 75Google Scholar.

51 The Epistolary Correspondence of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke and Dr. French Laurence (London, 1827), pp. 217–18Google Scholar.

52 Op. cit., p. 101. MacCunn's answer to the question (pp. 102–103) is that Burke's extreme fear for the results of the Revolution is a result of his belief that secular minds would destroy society; I believe this answer is incomplete and unsatisfactory.

53 Corr., III, 170.

54 Op. cit., p. 318.

55 Ibid.

56 Corr., III, 371. See also ibid., pp. 270, 304.