In Our Time - Edmund Burke

Episode Date: June 3, 2010

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of the eighteenth-century philosopher, politician and writer Edmund Burke.Born in Dublin, Burke began his career in London as a journalist and made his name with two works of philosophy before entering Parliament. There he quickly established a reputation as one of the most formidable orators of an age which also included Pitt the Younger.When unrest began in America in the 1760s, Burke was quick to defend the American colonists in their uprising. But it was his response to another revolution which ensured he would be remembered by posterity. In 1790 he published Reflections on the Revolution in France, a work of great literary verve which attacked the revolutionaries and predicted disaster for their project. The book prompted Thomas Paine to write his masterpiece Rights of Man, and Mary Wollstonecraft was among the others to take part in the ensuing pamphlet war. Burke's influence shaped our parliamentary democracy and attitude to Empire, and lingers today.With:Karen O'BrienProfessor of English at the University of WarwickRichard BourkeSenior Lecturer in History at Queen Mary, University of LondonJohn KeaneProfessor of Politics at the University of SydneyProducer: Thomas Morris.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Thanks for downloading the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk forward slash radio 4. I hope you enjoy the programme. Hello, in 1790, 18 months after the storming of the Bastille, a British MP published a pamphlet which condemned the French Revolution and accused its supporters of bringing anarchy, violence and terror to the population of France.

Edmund Burke's reflections on the revolution in France is an impassioned, intellectually rigorous and stylishly written attack which provoked enormous debate. Thomas Payne was moved to write his masterpiece, Rights of Man, in response. But Burke wasn't always so hostile to revolutionaries. When violence broke out in Britain's North American colonies in the 1760s, Burke spoke in Parliament in support of the colonists

in their struggle against British rule. One of the finest orators of his age, Burke was also a distinguished writer and philosopher. His ideas helped shape the future direction of British politics and they've deeply influenced thinkers up to the present day. With me to discuss the life and work of Edmund Burke are Karen O'Brien, Professor of English at the University of Warwick, Richard Burke, senior lecturer in the history at Queen Mary University of London,

and John Keane, recently appointed Professor of Politics at the University of Sydney. Karen O'Brien, the major events of Burke's career took place in London, but he was born in Dublin, about 1730. Can you tell us something about his background and upbringing? Yes, he was born into a reasonably prosperous family. His father was a practicing lawyer in Dublin and a Protestant. And of course, it's important to remember that at this time, Ireland was essentially a colony of Britain and that Protestant people in Ireland essentially monopolised most of the wealth political power

and that Catholic people endured very severe lack of civil liberties. Burke's mother, however, was from a long-standing ancient Catholic family. and she remained a Catholic. And there's some question, indeed, that Burke's father himself had converted to Protestantism to allow him to practice as a lawyer. So all through his life,

Burke had this perspective of having, being close to and grown up partly as part of a minority community and that deeply shaped the way that he thought about threatened and minority communities in his later political career. When he was about 12,

his father sent him to a Quaker school just outside of Dublin. And this was an interesting decision because at that school, Burke had exposure to a number of different kinds of Protestants, Protestant dissenters, not just members of the established church, and also to an inspirational schoolteacher who was a Quaker and a pacifist, and who taught him to think very sympathetically about various kinds of Protestant descent. And again, when Burke was older, during much of his parliamentary career,

he was very sympathetic, sometimes very actively sympathetic, to campaigns to improve the rights of dissenters in, Anglican England. So there's quite a contrast. He's in a tiny elite in Dublin and he's living the life of the Protestant elite, fairly rich, surrounded by serious poverty, serious Roman Catholic poverty.

He understands that one assumes through his mother. He goes to a Quaker school, which is a fascinating choice, where he brings in dissent. All these religious conflicts are still extremely powerful at that time. Then he goes to Trinity College at the age of 15 or 16. And Trinity College, Dublin, and is a brilliant scholar.

He's obviously been well taught at this Quaker school. He's been very well taught and his father sends him to Trinity because he wants him to train as a lawyer and he wants him to have that experience of going to university with other members of the Protestant elite. And he throws himself into that life. He founds a debating society.

They are a little bit careful about how political they allow those conversations to get. He also found a kind of periodical journal called the reformer which deals with issues of anglicising and reforming taste. And his whole experience at Trinity Dublin is essentially a preparation for a legal career

so that at the end of his time as a university scholar, his father then sends him to London to the Middle Temple so that he can ultimately train for the Irish bar. But we don't just stay there on the legal career because there was a literary streak in him from the beginning. He came out of his starting blocks with many talents, but one of them was certainly literary. Yes, and this seems to be the talent that flourished most early in his life.

He wrote poetry, and he was very interested in questions of aesthetics and questions of what is normative in taste, how do we form ideas of what is beautiful? How do ideas of taste relate generally to society? How can consensus about notions of taste in literature form the basis of other kinds of social consensus? So literature is a thing in itself for Burke, and Burke practices and subsequently becomes a great stylist.

But it's also a way of thinking about other kinds of imaginative community in a world, in an Irish world, where there are very deep divisions. And a very great Shakespearean, and he applied that to his contemporary politics. John Keane, after Trinity College Dublin, he came to London. There's a bit of fuzz about exactly what happened in a few years in London. But do we know how his career got started? One of his friends referred to him as the Irish adventurer.

He adventures to London in early 1750. He's only 21 years old. And for the purpose, as Karen has said, to study law at Middle Temple. It's true that we know little about the next five years or so, but we do know that Middle Temple had a wonderful library, and it was also a period where remarkable things were going on in the field of literature and politics. Rousseau's discourse on the origins of inequality appeared in 1754.

Bollingbrook's five-volume works appear in the same year. Bollingbrook once was described by Dr. Johnson as having aimed a blunderbuss at religion and morality. There was Dr. Johnson's first full-scale English dictionary in 1755. There was also the Lisbon earthquake in that year. And to add to the excitement of the career that was to become a great career in the field of political literature, Burke fell in love. I mean, it's something that political writers would die for. And it's first fruit.

You're being political writers are not supposed to fall in love? I mean, there'll be a massive letter from the political writers in this country. They say, we fall in love all the time, especially with politicians. And it's a combination of great political works falling in love, being in London, Irish, an adventurer. And its first fruit is this great work published in 1756 by a very prominent... Let's stick to the love for a moment. He married a Catholic, didn't he? Well, there is some controversy about this. Jane Nugent was her name.

Introduced to him, it seems, through a physician, an Irish physician. And they fell in love. They had two children. There were many who knew Burke who thought that this was perhaps the most perfect marriage, very unusual for these circles. Yeah, I'm just one. I mean, it isn't a big point. It's just that it's very interesting that he comes over. He's an Anglic and all his life. He protests the Protestant cause

and it's very interesting that he marries somebody who like his mother as a Catholic we seem to get from the notes I have read few me that seems so that's what happened and there we go The Irish doesn't disappear in this way No no absolutely Then he published this work of the vindication of natural societies Can you give us a brief view of why that's important

in this career? It's a work which is an enigma in that it's of course published anonymously It's written in the form of Of course. Because it's his debut appearance, and it's written, it seems to mimic, but also to satirise, Bollingbrook. It's written by an aging noble to a young lord, and its themes are scandalous. In there you will find, in the vindication of natural society, you will find,

the first glimpses of Burke's idea that society is natural, by which he means that it's the affections, the passions, that attach us to institutions that are the base of any political order. So natural society, the propensity to natural society is outlined here. Human beings, that's gregarious. There is the whole idea in this vindication of natural society that all institutions are time-space specific, that is that they're contextual, they're conventional.

And they are, for this reason, precious. They're fragile. This is a theme that would be developed later by Burke. What is interesting in this text, though, is the anarchic side, I could say, about his reflections on politics. he goes through three political orders. He talks about tyranny,

which he thinks is a monstrous abuse of power. He talks about aristocracy, the rule of a few, and he's very unkind in this essay about aristocracy. He likens aristocrats to sultans and so on, and democracy, which for him is vicious, giddy. He likens it to the most. moon, these constant revolutions. So what's left is the sense that actually political institutions are also wholly conventional. But there's one thing that I think appears in this vindication,

which remains critical through the whole of his career. Is it possible to quote Latin? Quistodian, Ipsos, custodos. Everyone listening to this program knows what that means. Yes, good. So who will guard the guy? Exactly. And this is a great question that Burke tables in this essay. How can power be trusted? On what basis can it be trusted when it's so easily abused? Richard, but can we develop that? Did you think this book, it's been very elliptically but very clearly explained that. Can you tell us whether that set a pattern for his thinking? It was a satire. He had to actually say it was a satire because a lot of people didn't get that it was a satire, but never mind. How did it set out his story? How did it set out his story? Well, it set a pattern for his thinking in the sense that it tabled a preoccupation of his that was to stay with him for the rest of his career. And the best way of pinpointing that preoccupation is really by picking up on what John Keene said,

that's to say it's a satire on Bollingbrook. Bollingbrook's works had been published in 1754, and what Burke was specifically targeting was his deism. Deism was the view basically that nature was a systematically ordered whole set in motion by a deity but it could do without or dispense with revelation and was skeptical about priestcraft and also doubtful of the immortality of the soul. Burke's view was therefore that this is basically a high road to atheism and his preoccupation with deism as facilitating atheism was something that stayed with him through the rest of his career

and appears again in the 1790s because one of the core points of his attack in the reflections on the French philos is on the assumption that they're irreligious So I think that core preoccupation is something that established in 1756 is something that is still with him in the 1790s. Did it establish him even though it was anonymous? It would probably get round that it was him. Yes.

Anyway, did he feel established as a writer in the public domain with that? Well, people didn't know what was him. No, all his early works were published anonymously and there was various forms of writing which he engaged in the 179. the vindication was the first. His next published work was a philosophical inquiry into the origin of our ideas of the sublime and beautiful.

Published in 1757, second edition, 1759, but it was actually written before the vindication. It was probably completed around about 53, and he'd actually been working on it since his college days. But anyway, just as a matter of mentions, that too was published anonymously, was it? That was published anonymously. also wrote an essay towards an abridgment of English history, which wasn't published, but

basically it was an anonymous production in the 1750s. Well, got that out the way. I was wrong about that. Anyway, a philosophical inquiry into the origins of our ideas of the sublime and beautiful. It doesn't seem to be something that would come from the pen of a political philosopher. And it had a big impact, didn't it? Well, it's probably his second most famous work, but as Count O'Brien was, was pointing out, really began not as

a political adventurer, but as a literary adventurer, and really wanted to develop and establish a literary career. As a result, or as an outgrowth of that ambition, he penned the philosophical inquiry. What distinction did he make between

the beautiful and the sublime? Right. Well, it's tricky and debated, but in a nutshell, standing back and looking at the work, it's a philosophical study of the nature of the human mind, but focusing on particular aspects, a particular aspect really of the human mind, that's to say our imaginative responses, focusing on two particular imaginative responses, the sublime, which is the response to something that is great or awesome or overwhelming, like an overwhelming landscape or an awesome idea like God. That's the sublime. On the

other hand, the beautiful is the response to something that is orderly or quaint, something that inspires affection, attachment, love. Burke traced both these responses to two fundamental human impulses, the instinct for self-preservation on the one hand and the instinct for sociability on the other. When Burke became an MP in 1765, was that a sudden, unexpected move or had he been working towards that through his time in London? He'd been working towards it, in the sense that his political career really begins when he becomes a secretary to William Gerard Hamilton, who's a British MP in the late 1750s.

And he actually then goes to Ireland with him because Hamilton ends up being a secretary to the Lord Lieutenant in Ireland for about 18 months. So his political career really begins then. However, that ends in failure and acrimony, really. But Burke has then taken up in 1765 by the markers of Rockingham and becomes his secretary. Because Rockingham from July 1765 basically is heading a ministry.

And Burke then goes into Parliament, actually in January 1766. From a rotten borough. Yeah. Which he complains about later in his life. But that's the way he gets in. He gets in through a borough under the control, a seat for Wendover under the control of Lord Verney. Can you give us John Keene,

idea of the political situation in the 1760s. What were the Parliament in London? What were the big issues that were coming at them? Because he got embroiled in politics, he were relative to his sleeves. He was in the House. We've heard about his great maiden speech. He would speak until dawn and so he was in there. What were the big issues coming their way? Well, I think the one that began to gain ground prominence, it racked the whole political the establishment was, to put it simply, the shape of the empire. And for Burke, Burke's vision, I think, of empire was not one of a Commonwealth of nations that would come later. His idea is that British gentlemen, English gentlemen at the core, should display

magnanimity. So the abuse of power in the colonies was forbidden. He railed against... By him, as you right. Well, to be discussed. But the idea of Burke is that Westminster ought to be the center of an empire. It should govern responsibly. It should govern in accordance with the designs of God, of natural morality, and so on. And it's these themes that are tested. In particular, it's the administration that Tory administration of Lord North that encounters all sorts of crises in the American colonies, in the governance of India, and of course the Irish question. And Burke is central to the parliamentary debates and the public discourse in the limited public, aristocratic, urban public that's developing. He's central to the politics of the empire and its future.

What was Burke's political affiliation when he entered Parliament, Karen? Can you give us some idea who his friends were or what beliefs he'd picked up and so on? Yes, he chose to align himself with quite a highly principled faction of the Whig Party, led by Lord Rockingham, as Richard mentioned. And they were briefly in government in 1765, and then in opposition for most of Burke's career. And he stuck by them quite loyally. He could easily, I think, have found another way through into political power,

but he stuck with the Rockingham Wigs. And what he did actually was to make a virtue of that oppositional position in the later 1760s, early 70s, by arguing the case that politics had become unbalanced and nopsided and that there were too many people too close to the king who had undue influence on the king. And they may call that patriotism, they may insist that they can form a kind of alliance with the king

for the good of the country. But actually, according to his version of Rockingham Whig principles, politicians should be accountable. There should be transparent reasons why they are elected, why they hold the offices that they do, and there should be some sense that they're accountable for their actions to the people and that their actions should not be in any way secret.

Can you give us some idea before we move on to his actions of the sort of landscape of his mind? Because we're talking about a man who was friends with Samuel Johnson and was in Simon Johnson's Club, Meck on Monday nights, and that was literary unpolitical, but was literary-based, a man who's friend of David Hume,

a great philosopher, a man who's friend of Adam Smith, a great economist. So these people were his friends, I suppose they thought of each other as equals, Gibbon, a historian. And so this is a rich mix, isn't it, that he has? It's a very rich mix.

So during this period, Burke is starting to think very deeply about political economy and to imbibe by ideas of free trade and a different kind of vision of political economy. Through his contacts with writers like Hume and Smith, whom you mentioned, he's thinking also, I think, about how civilisation progresses,

what it means to be part of a modern commercial society, how politics should interact with that new kind of society that's coming about in the 18th century. And through Dr. Johnson, I think he's thinking very profoundly about questions of morality. And these questions will come back, especially in the reflections.

But Johnson is someone who, like Bergen later life, felt that moral principles are not something that actually evolve historically, that there are no new discoveries to be made in morality. So there's a kind of moral conservatism that goes hand in hand with a progressive modernising sort of wiggery that Burke has in this period. Richard Burke, could you amplify that a little in terms of his relationship with Adam Smith, for instance, and the free market idea? Well, sure. I would say generally the unusual thing about Burke is that he was a sort of highly

literate and intellectually engaged politician operating the centre of high politics and encountering various major intellectual figures in the 18th century. Smith is an obvious case, Rousseau is another, Montesquieu's another. He was the earliest

reviewer of Rousseau's early works in the annual register, which he edited between 758 and 65. He was an early respondent to Montesquieu as well, whose ideas incorporated into various of his writings and subsequently his speeches. And, of course, Adam Smith is then another big example.

He became, he first of all was given a copy of Adam Smith's first work by David Hume. And he reviewed that work in 1759 and also then wrote Smith a letter of as a work, Congratulations, where he sets out his approval for Smith's ideas about morality. and subsequently, of course, he becomes familiar with his work on political economy after the wealth of nations is published in 1776. So we're talking about an extraordinary well-furnished mind, a man of remarkable eloquence, even in an age where they went in for remarkable eloquence, and great stamina, the number of hours they spoke all night talkings. So John Keane, let's talk about one of the first, the first important intervention about the British colonies in America. There were tensions coming in the 1770s. Can you briefly tell us the tensions and then point as to Burke's position Burke began to assume?

Yes, for many something like a marital squabble developed with the Englishmen of the American colonies, as Burke liked to refer to them as. And taxation matters were central. Burke took the position that the colonies in America, there is not yet a United States of America, that's an anachronism, but these colonies were governed, reasonably well governed by English gentlemen. And part of the settlement with the American colonies was their right to tax themselves and not to have the power of Westminster. being abused over them. He began, his involvement with the American colonies question, raised all of the themes that I think we've already put on the table, as it were. It is that political power is granted on trust, and trust implies accountability. And what he saw develop

from 1773, 1774 onwards was the abuse of power by the Georgian monarchy, by Westminster, and he didn't like it. So, Karen O'Brien, let's get to Burke's actions. What was unfolding in America was that the colonists, let's call them, that we're getting more and more restless, and the British government was, according to Burke, his own government was behaving very badly towards them. Can we develop that a little?

Yes, Burke gave two very important speeches, one on American taxation and one, a speech called Consistening, with the colonies. He gives those speeches in the House of Commons, but he also, a little untypically for an MP of his day, arranges publication for these speeches. So they have a very wide audience. And he argues the case, as John has suggested, that the government of the day is pushing the colonists into rebellion, that in essence they could be allowed to tax themselves and the British government should not over insist on its rightful sovereignty over the colonists because it will simply alienate the American colonists

from the British family. So that's a political consideration. Behind it is a philosophical concern, which John has been referring to, the business of the morality, the light touch, the looking. Can you develop that? Yes, there's a morality. There's a vision of empire,

which is a vision of a kind of transatlantic political community, which is based on trust on a very fragile kind of allegiance, because obviously with the Atlantic Ocean in between Britain and America, it's very difficult to enforce allegiance. So what he is saying is that the British government ought to ensure colonial allegiance to the centre by extending a sense of freedom as a kind of culture of freedom to the colonies. So he waxes quite lyrical towards the end of that speech on conciliation with the colonies about the notion of a transatlantic political community in which we might all be brothers, a shared kind of venture. and what he does is he takes the political and economic language of the day. He refers to the Navigation Acts, which are the legal framework for restricting colonial trade.

But he says the true act of navigation, in a metaphorical sense, is freedom. And the other thing that he says is that Americans are radical Protestants of a kind, that their Protestantism is the dissidents of dissent. And if you don't recognize that kind of Fisipar, separatist logic of Protestantism, then you are going to drive the colonists out of the empire altogether. And these printed speeches were received with a great rapture in America, and he had a big influence there too. And with some antagonism in his own country,

so he was walking the first of many tightrobes here. Well, it was a great British crisis, really, the loss of the American colonies. I think it's important to recognise that Burke wasn't supporting the American Revolution and certainly wasn't supporting the secession of the colonies. In fact, he was rather skeptical about the dissidents of dissent, the Protestantism of the Protestant religion, which Karen O'Brien referred to. That's to say he thought this was a rather dangerously enthusiastic tendency.

However, at the same time, he believed it could be conciliated. And that's the essence of the conciliation argument, that there were two alternatives facing the problem. British government, given the liberty-loving tendencies of the North American colonists, either you would have to conciliate their preferences within some reasonable framework, or else you'd have to conquer them. And that was in no one's interest. And so that's the basis of Burke's advocacy of the conciliation policy. I'm afraid to say that we were making the British, particularly English, were making a big mistake here in order to make a mistake both

politically and militarily and philosophically. Yeah. Right the way around. They got it wrong. Yeah, in essence. I want to get to the French Revolution, John Keane, but just to show that to point out to listen to the consistency of Burke and the way that he took on every big issue, the India became a big issue. And he, because he brought Warren Hastings at trial,

that took seven years, that's a programme in itself, it's a series itself, it's a day's broadcasting itself. But his view of India and the East India Company is germane to what we're going to discover. It was very similar to his view of America, as I understand it. Yes, here Burke devotes at least seven volumes of speeches and papers on India. The gist of the problem is this, that India, which is, in a way, the white Englishman's burden, is special because there is a company, the East India Company,

which is granted a license and subject to, well, that's the question, is it subject to imperial sovereignty or not. Burke targets Warren Hastings, governor of Bengal, didn't like him, thought of him as a despot, Montesquieu's key neologism of the 1750s, which Burke repeatedly uses, disorderly rule, based on fear, on the abuse of power, on hubris. And he lays in to Warren Hastings and to the East India Company because he, he, he lays in to Warren Hastings, and to the East India Company, because he thinks that they are abusing the customs, the traditions,

the morals, the sentiments of Indian people. It's never quite clear who the Indian people are, but he certainly got in mind princes. And he thinks that through the House of Commons that Hastings ought to be reigned in. The East India Company should be reigned in at one point. he refers to the East India Company as an oppressive, irregular, capricious, unsteady, rapacious, and peculating despotism. And he stakes his political career during the 1780s on the impeachment of Warren Hastings.

He fails, but it raises once again the issue that had come up in the American colonies of what kind of empire is going to develop. And I think in Burke there is very clearly the fear that characters like Hastings, the symbols of despotic power, will, as it were, boomerang back into the heartlands of the empire. And this fills him with fear. So we know where we are with his... He's taking big issues on, but the biggest maybe is the next one, Karen O'Brien. In 1790, his best known were reflections on the revolution in France. Now, what moved him to write that?

What did he say, and what was its impact? He was aware of events unfolding in France from 1789, and he took quite some time to respond to... This was after the storming of the Bastille. This was after the Estates, a portion of the Estates General had declared themselves a National Assembly, had set about forming a new constitution for France,

which severely restricted the powers of the king, and also after they decided to... And brought democracy, I am. Not entirely democracy, but bought a form of elected government. And also after they'd confiscated church lands, and that's actually going to turn out to be very important for the reflections. But it's actually what appeared to most people in Britain as a very moderate phase of the French Revolution,

that this is long before the execution of Louis XVIth and his wife, long before the September massacres, the terror and the eventual European war that followed. Nevertheless, Burke becomes increasingly worried by what he sees in France. a young friend of his sons asks him to say what he thinks about it. Don't you think he asks that this is a kind of liberty for France along the kinds of lines that you've been arguing in the Indian context and the American context.

And Burke's spectacularly long published written answer is a letter to this young man in which she says no, this is a kind of dangerous, potentially very violent, enforced modernisation of France that's going to tear up everything that's good about France's history, traditions and will lead ultimately to economic and social collapse if the French are not very careful. So it comes in very strong then, John Keane. Can you just take that his argument even further than Karen has taken this? So the listener so we know what he's on about. All the themes that first surfaced in the vindication reappear, I think. His hostility to geometric thinking to sort of abstract reason applied by the Jacobins to, in the attempt to transform

to uproot a whole social and political order. His great despise, I would say, and fear of democracy, the tumult, the ignorance, the disorderliness, the fear of the fight. In the sense of order, he thought, his view was that the variety of human life is far outstrips and outreaches any attempt to put a pattern on it. And when you put patterns on it, you diminish it, you simplify it, and therefore you distort it and you're in trouble. Yes, you do, but in the reflections, the ultimate support for social and political order,

God, an eternal being, also becomes very central. And what he dislikes, as Karen has said, is that the revolution begins to strip to separate church and state begin to tear up the church, and this fills him with considerable anxiety. And it's in this cauldron of revolution, Burke uses the word in its newly modern sense.

It's not, in the vindication he refers to revolutions of moons, the constant circularity. Here is something different. Here is an upheaval that is modern and dangerous and evil. And it's in this cauldron, and in this work, which was a bestseller in certain circles. 17,000 copies in the first year, a hardback. Yes, good sales.

Nothing like Tom Payne's Rights of Man. We'll come back to that in a moment. It was pitched, of course, at a particular, let's say, aristocratic republic. But it's in there that all the pithy, oft-quoted sentences are to be found. The age of chivalry is gone. He speaks about the rights of Englishmen, society is a contract, the great primeval contract of eternal society, and the above all the appeal to prejudices.

I think you can read this letter as an appeal to prejudiced Britons, to gentlemen. King George III thought that it was a wonderful work in defence of gentlemen. An appeal to their Englishness, to their love of freedom, their respect for order and law, and of course God. Richard Burke, there was thought to be by many people, a contradiction, and especially the young poets,

who had thought that Burke, the sublime and beautiful, Burke, in favour of the American independence, was after their own heart, a radical, a free spirit. They were outraged that he should turn against the French Revolution, which bliss, was it in that dawn to be alive, is what they thought. So did you see a great contradiction between the view he took over the American independents and the French's view on the early stages, as Karen pointed out,

this is way before the guillotine, the terror and robespier, that lot. Do you see a contradiction there? Well, Burke was, as you say, accused of apostasy by various figures in the 1790s, including former political associates, most notably Fox, but also other figures like Wordsworth and Coleridge, whom you mention, he was accused of a possibility or betraying his own principles for two reasons, really. He was associated with supporting dissenters, number one, and number two, he was associated with supporting the American colonists.

The American Revolution was associated with a bid for liberty, pro-French revolutionary politicians in Britain in the early 7090s, also associated the French Revolution with a bit for liberty, and therefore the thought, if you supported one, surely you should support the other. Equally, if you supported the claims of dissenters in the 1770s and 1780s, which Burke had, why was he so antagonistic towards them in the reflections? Bearing in mind that the reflections has really two targets, not just one, British domestic politics and events in France.

And as regards British domestic politics, he is really setting his sights on dissenters who he thinks are now hell-bent on destroying the British Constitution. Is there a contradiction between his two positions? I don't think so, because it's just thinking that there's any connection between the American and French revolutions because the word revolution is common to both. In actual fact, he opposed the American Revolution anyway, and his view was that politics should be based on a rapprochement between government and opinion. that was no longer viable on the model being set up in France.

So I don't see any contradiction. In fact, he thought the French Revolution was really an event without precedent. And if he's right that it was an event without precedent, there couldn't really be a contradiction between views he adopted in response to it and what had come before. Yeah, that's your interpretation now. But then it was clearly thought there was a contradiction. Certainly it was, yeah.

I mean, Charles James Fox ended up in tears in the House of Commons at their breach, thinking that Burke was betraying what they'd be. both had stood for. But I think it's to really answer the question, one has to know exactly what it was that appalled him about events in France. I mean, he was putting himself on the colossal strain. He'd taken on Warren Hastings. He'd lost seven years of his life there. He was now taking the French Revolution and his greatest friends, the great orator, Fox, the idol was turning against him. The poets,

whom they were turning against him. He's really taking a lot of risks there, Karen. And one of the reactions the reactions coming thick and fast. The first we may briefly mention is the first is Mary Walsoncraft. That's right. She writes a vindication of the rights of men and she's absolutely appalled by what Burke has to say, especially by the notion of chivalry.

Burke makes a central platform of his argument the notion of continuity change and progress within English history, starting with medieval chivalry and evolving to the modern day. Now from a female point of view chivalry is quite appalling. But also she says that there's something kind of gothic and excessively rooted in history and unwilling to recognise the needs of the present

in Burke's arguments. And there are many other attacks. We've mentioned Payne's rights of man, which is a particularly good one and best-selling one. And what Payne says is that Burke's reflections mystify monarchy. It's rather like the Wizard of Oz. He says that you know, Burke treats monarchy as though it's something that's kept behind a curtain, but actually when you pull up back the curtain, the thing that's behind it is just hilarious. So there's a kind of mystique of history and mystique of aristocracy and monarchy in Burke's writing that Payne finds absolutely preposterous. So he provokes this great work, John, Tom Paine, Rights of Man?

Yes, I mean, the reflections, in fact, sparked a huge pamphlet war of which Rights of Man, the first part, was an instance. It greatly outsold, Burke, because it was pitched at a different audience. And I think here, despite a lot of overlap, between Burke and Payne. Burke once told a friend humorously, we hunt in pairs. It's an underdeveloped idea.

I mean, they hunted in pairs against despotism, against arrogance. But in Rights of Man, one can see the split that develops within the Whigish camp. And pain is very much on the side of Richard Price, who was the inspirer of Burke's reflections. And the teacher of Mary Walsoncraft, but we haven't got time for that.

So Paine stakes out a position that rejects awe of towards the nobility, towards priests, defends the principle of rights, rights that are, of course, bound up with 1688-89, but cosmopolitan rights, rights of citizens of the world, and thinks that indeed the living are entitled to get rid of governments if they're despotic, to overthrow them as the French he thinks are doing in the early phases of the revolution. Burke found that anathema. What would you say, should Burke, your namesake's main legacy was? Well, his legacy is multifarious and complex

because he's taken up in various countries over the next 200. years and in various guises. He has an impact in central Europe via an early translation by Friedrich Gens of the reflections. Gens himself is Secretary to Metternich, so there's a clear direct impact on

European politics via that route. He's also taken up by British liberals in the mid to late 19th century and by American Conservatives in the 20th. Well, thank you very much, so, Derrush. Thank you very much for galloping through that. That was a lot to cheer off, and thank you very much for taking it on.

Thank you, Karen O'Brien, Richard Burke, John Keen. Next week we're talking about Al-Biruni, the first Muslim scholar, scientist, philosopher, historian, first Muslim scholar to write about India. Thank you for listening. If you've enjoyed this Radio 4 podcast, why not try others, such as Thinking Aloud, where Laurie Taylor discusses the latest social science research.

To find out more, visit bbc.co.com.uk Radio 4.