# What were Edmund Burke's sources for predicting the failure of the French Revolution? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 20, 2015, 12:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-edmund-burkes-sources-for-predicting-the-failure-of-the-french-revolution/713186 "2015-02-20T12:28:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![davidmich](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e56c9b/32.png) [@davidmich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidmich)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2015, 12:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-edmund-burkes-sources-for-predicting-the-failure-of-the-french-revolution/713186/1 "2015-02-20T12:28:37Z")
Hi What were Edmund Burke’s sources for predicting the failure of the French Revolution? He must have had a good understanding of what was happening in France prior to the Revolution to understand the character of the future Jacobin leaders and what lay in store for France under the Jacobin boot. Did he follow the foreign press closely? There were also plenty of disaffected members of the French nobility living in England at the time. Were they some of his sources? I look forward to your feedback. davidmich ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2015, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-edmund-burkes-sources-for-predicting-the-failure-of-the-french-revolution/713186/2 "2015-02-20T14:46:34Z")
Maybe he had access to unskewed polls demonstrating Louis XVI’s surging popular appeal. (I got nothin’) ---
**Author:** ![The\_dread\_simoom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/73ab20/32.png) [@The\_dread\_simoom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_dread_simoom)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2015, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-edmund-burkes-sources-for-predicting-the-failure-of-the-french-revolution/713186/3 "2015-02-20T19:25:21Z")
I don’t think there was much of an indication beforehand that the Jacobins would emerge on top. Danton & Robespierre were both unknowns. ---
**Author:** ![MichaelEmouse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/michaelemouse/32/101_2.png) [@MichaelEmouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MichaelEmouse)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2015, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-edmund-burkes-sources-for-predicting-the-failure-of-the-french-revolution/713186/4 "2015-02-20T19:28:36Z")
He knew about the English Civil War and the Glorious Revolution. ---
**Author:** ![Deeg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/deeg/32/2955_2.png) [@Deeg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Deeg)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2015, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-edmund-burkes-sources-for-predicting-the-failure-of-the-french-revolution/713186/5 "2015-02-20T21:49:54Z")
He might have been lucky. Every revolution has people who think it will fail and others who think it will succeed so somebody has to be right. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2015, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-edmund-burkes-sources-for-predicting-the-failure-of-the-french-revolution/713186/6 "2015-02-20T23:21:38Z")
I took a look at the Wikipedia article on Burke and the following would seem to be a starting point: > [@](#): > > The events of 5–6 October 1789, in which a crowd of Parisian women marched on Versailles to compel King Louis XVI to return to Paris, turned Burke against it. In a letter to his son, Richard, on 10 October he said: “This day I heard from Laurence who has sent me papers confirming the portentous state of France—where the Elements which compose Human Society seem all to be dissolved, and a world of Monsters to be produced in the place of it—where Mirabeau presides as the Grand Anarch; and the late Grand Monarch makes a figure as ridiculous as pitiable”.[72] On 4 November Charles-Jean-François Depont wrote to Burke, requesting that he endorse the revolution. Burke replied that any critical language of it by him should be taken “as no more than the expression of doubt” but he added: “You may have subverted Monarchy, but not recover’d freedom”.[73] In the same month he described France as “a country undone”. Burke’s first public condemnation of the revolution occurred on the debate in Parliament on the army estimates on 9 February 1790, provoked by praise of the revolution by Pitt and Fox: > > Since the House had been prorogued in the summer much work was done in France. The French had shewn themselves the ablest architects of ruin that had hitherto existed in the world. In that very short space of time they had completely pulled down to the ground, their monarchy; their church; their nobility; their law; their revenue; their army; their navy; their commerce; their arts; and their manufactures…[there was a danger of] an imitation of the excesses of an irrational, unprincipled, proscribing, confiscating, plundering, ferocious, bloody and tyrannical democracy…[in religion] the danger of their example is no longer from intolerance, but from Atheism; a foul, unnatural vice, foe to all the dignity and consolation of mankind; which seems in France, for a long time, to have been embodied into a faction, accredited, and almost avowed.[74] Clark, J. C. D. (2001). Edmund Burke: Reflections on the Revolution in France: a Critical Edition. Stanford. p. 25. ISBN 0-8047-3923-4. I take it less that Burke predicted the failure of the revolution and more that he saw it’s failure in action, as “freedom” became mob rule. ---
**Author:** ![Fuzzy\_wuzzy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a8b319/32.png) [@Fuzzy\_wuzzy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fuzzy_wuzzy)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2015, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-edmund-burkes-sources-for-predicting-the-failure-of-the-french-revolution/713186/7 "2015-02-20T23:52:27Z")
> [@Deeg](#): > > He might have been lucky. Every revolution has people who think it will fail and others who think it will succeed so somebody has to be right. > [@Lumpy](#): > > I took a look at the Wikipedia article on Burke and the following would seem to be a starting point: Clark, J. C. D. (2001). Edmund Burke: Reflections on the Revolution in France: a Critical Edition. Stanford. p. 25. ISBN 0-8047-3923-4. > > I take it less that Burke predicted the failure of the revolution and more that he saw it’s failure in action, as “freedom” became mob rule. He was still rather early in predicting the Revolution’s failure. It was not just the failure he predicted but it’s descent. Wiki’s article on his Reflections on the Revolution contains some interesting reading: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflections\_on\_the\_Revolution\_in\_France](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflections_on_the_Revolution_in_France) ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2015, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-edmund-burkes-sources-for-predicting-the-failure-of-the-french-revolution/713186/8 "2015-02-21T00:27:30Z")
I’m looking at his Reflections now, and his objection to the Revolution is that, first, it’s without precedence, second, it upsets the constitutional order, third, is that it puts ultimate sovereignty in the people, and fourth, is dominated by idealists, who have theories of government but no practical experience in governing. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2015, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-edmund-burkes-sources-for-predicting-the-failure-of-the-french-revolution/713186/9 "2015-02-21T01:03:09Z")
My recollection is that the fourth point was one of particular significance. He believed that constitutions have to be “organic”; that is, they have to be based on the customs and practices of the country. The British and the US Constitution met these requirements, even though the latter was a revolutionary break, because it was firmly based in the history and traditions of the colonies, including inheritance from Britain. By contrast, he saw the French constitution writers as all theory and air, divorced from French experience, and doomed to fail.