Born, Dublin 1728 Died, Beaconsfield July 8, 1797 The contents of the present volume were written by Burke In The World's Classics' in the years 1790 and 1791. PREFACE THE present volume contains publications of Burke relating entirely to the Revolution in France. Gladstone thought Burke was a tripartite man; America, France, Ireland—' right as to two, wrong in one.' We have now to consider Burke in regard to that one great cause to which he gave himself where the verdict of history has been declared against him. And yet, again it must be pointed out that his cardinal error detracts in no way from the value of these pieces. Though the special issue is misleading, as Mr. Morley says of the Reflections, 'It lives because it contains a sentiment, a method, a set of informal principles, which, awakened into new life after the Revolution, rapidly transformed the current ways of thinking and feeling about all the most serious objects of our attention, and have powerfully helped to give a richer substance to all modern literature'; and again, he says, 'the book is like some temple by whose structure and design we allow ourselves to be impressed, without being careful to measure the precise truth or fitness of the worship to which it was consecrated by its first founders.' In all Burke's works, but in regard especially to his Writings on French Affairs, readers are constantly forced to feel with Hazlitt that, if in arriving at one error he discovered a hundred truths, they would consider themselves a hundred times more indebted to him than if in stumbling upon what they considered as the right side of the question he had committed a hundred absurdities in striving to establish his point. In the 'hundred truths' delivered by the way will be found the chief glory of these pieces to the present generation. It must be remembered that at the time of the publi cation of the Reflections, November, 1790, though there had been great and violent changes in France, such as were sure to shock the keen sensibility of Burke, they were such as gave hope to those who knew the errors of the old system better. There was, indeed, at that time amongst the best statesmen in France every expectation of the settlement of a Constitutional Government. These expectations continued till the death of Mirabeau in April, 1791. The King himself had acquiesced; though the more truculent nobles, from a safe distance, continued to urge him and foreign nations to accept nothing but a complete restoration of the old order. The States General, after being in abeyance since 1614, had met on May 5, 1789; and the Bastille was stormed on July 14. But nothing more revolutionary had as yet taken place. Danton and Robespierre were unknown, and there had been no talk of a republic. Wordsworth and his sister and Coleridge landed at Calais on their tour through France and Italy, on July 13, 1790, the eve of the day on which Louis XVI swore fidelity to the new constitution; Wordsworth continuing long after to exult in the Revolution Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, It was before the end of this year that Burke burst forth, angered by the fact that at a meeting of the Revolution Society-a society which commemorated our own peaceful revolution of 1688-sentiments of appreciation had been expressed. Dr. Price's sermon certainly contained expressions not generally acquiesced in. But all Burke's previous political associates were looking across the water with hopeful admiration; and it is impossible to form any other conclusion than that his love of order and reverence for settled government, with an insufficient knowledge of the true state of affairs, led him lamentably astray. How far Burke must be held accountable for what followed it is impossible to say; but certain it is that |