Edmund Burke Versus John Locke

Introduction

Most people know that Edmund Burke wrote in response to the French Revolution and is universally admired for his criticisms of Democratic Republicanism. They often are not clued in to what he actually said. Rather most intellectual conservatives refer to him in code. When conservatives quote Burke they usually first quote his earlier writings and speeches supporting the US Colonies revolt against the Crown.  They rarely quote “Reflections on the Revolution” directly. Instead they refer to it obliquely. I’ve come to realize why, over time. 

Burke was ostensibly arguing against the French Republicans, Jacobins and revolutionaries in Paris. But in reality he also was arguing with his own previous generation of Whigs and John Locke. He was arguing with the very notion of democratic republicanism.

John Locke

The intellectual founder of the Enlightenment in the English Speaking world is most certainly John Locke. His Treatises on Government define the vision for what Government should be. He invents the word “commonwealth” as a translation of the word “Republic” but with added sensibility from English History and experience in his choice of words.  And John Locke defined the parameters of what a just commonwealth should look like.  For that reason John Locke is often quoted by conservatives extensively, and selectively.[http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2014/09/commonwealth-according-to-locke.html]

Burke's opposition to Locke

The reason they don’t quote Burke is that Burke wasn’t arguing with his contemporaries such as Mary Wollstonecraft or Paine, but was arguing with his own mentor and intellectual father, John Locke. (what I consider a subversion and betrayal of Lockean principles)

Arguing with John Locke

Paine wrote his “Rights of Man” [http://www.ushistory.org/paine/rights/] in response to “Reflections on the Revolution in France” [http://www.constitution.org/eb/rev_fran.htm]. Not only that but Mary Wollenstonecraft wrote “Vindication of the Rights of Men”[http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/991] also in reaction to Burke.  Both wrote in defense of basic human rights and the enlightenment.

Attacking the Basis of Democracy

Edmund Burke wasn’t really arguing solely with Paine or Mary Wollenstonecraft. He was arguing with John Lock.

Edmund Burke, in this book, wasn’t attacking merely the excesses of the Republicans in France, but the Federalist and Republican notions of critics of the Crown in his own country.  – and the USA. When Burke attacked the principles of John Locke, on whom Paine, Wollenstonecraft and others of the enlightenment based their arguments, he was attacking the basis of our democracy as well.

Attacking the Principles of Electoral Republican Democracy

When he attacked the Federalist notion that people have the rights:

(1) “to choose our own governors.”

(2)    “to cashier them for misconduct.”

(3) “to frame a government for ourselves.”[1]

Edmund Burke was attacking the rights of the people to representative democracy! His modern day admirers know this, so when they refer to him as their hero, they are using coded and abstract language to say that they are against republican principles. Which is odd, because most of these admirers of Burke claim to be Republicans in the USA.

Attacking Republican Principles Indirectly

Now, he couldn’t go at this directly, so he writes a long lawyerly, rhetorical exercise in sophistry to do it.  He had to pay lip service to the Glorious revolution in order to attack and demolish Locke’s concepts.  In order to accomplish his end he first attacks the notion that people have a right to choose their own governors. And he does by conflating the reality that when the Whigs who put in place the Hanover line, they paid lip service and accepted the long traditions of royalty in Britain. He notes that they tried to avoid even the appearance of an election:

“They knew that a doubtful title of succession would but too much resemble an election, and that an election would be utterly destructive of the "unity, peace, and tranquillity of this nation", which they thought to be considerations of some moment.”[2]

Arguing with Himself – Wollenstonecraft

It was a change in leadership.  Call it an election or an appointment.  And of course a radical course of action would have been hard on the peace of of the country. They had the example of the interregnum of Olivar Cromwell, when the King was replaced with a dictator “Lord Protector”. When they brought back the crown they didn’t want Governors who could rule absolutely. They didn’t want another “Lord Protector, so they left mostly ceremonial powers with the King, but trusted the “Governorship” to the Prime Minister. Who could be replaced.  In so doing they were limiting the power of both King and Prime Minister. And employing the Republican principle of separation of powers. So Burkes argument is not only sophistry, it is transparent sophistry, and as Mary Wollenstonecraft writes:

“You were so eager to taste the sweets of power, that you could not wait till time had determined, whether a dreadful delirium would settle into a confirmed madness; but, prying into the secrets of Omnipotence, you thundered out that God had hurled him from his throne, and that it was the most insulting mockery to recollect that he had been a king, or treat him with any particular respect on account of his former dignity…. I have, Sir, been reading, with a scrutinizing, comparative eye, several of your insensible and profane speeches during the King's illness. I disdain to take advantage of a man's weak side, or draw consequences from an unguarded transport—A lion preys not on carcasses!^[33] [emphasis Wollstonecraft's]”[3]

So Burke was revealing his hypocrisy in this book.  No wonder modern Conservatives so love him. And his attack on the  right to “choose our own governors” borders on anti-semitism as well:

“To provide for these objects and, therefore, to exclude for ever the Old Jewry doctrine of "a right to choose our own governors", they follow with a clause containing a most solemn pledge,taken from the preceding act of Queen Elizabeth, as solemn a pledge as ever was or can be given in favor of an hereditary succession, and as solemn a renunciation as could be made of the principles by this Society imputed to them:

And here he continues:

The Lords spiritual and temporal, and Commons, do, in the name of all the people aforesaid, most humbly and faithfully submit themselves, their heirs and posterities for ever; and do faithfully promise that they will stand to maintain, and defend their said Majesties, and also the limitation of the crown, herein specified and contained, to the utmost of their powers, etc. etc.[4]