Burke Rebutted

Abstract

Among Burke’s earliest critics were some of his closest associates. He sent a draft of the early part of Reflections on the Revolution in France to fellow-MP Philip Francis for comment. Francis was shocked, and asked Burke whether he really thought it was worthy of a Privy Councillor ‘to enter into a war of Pamphlets with Dr Price?’ Burke ought, Francis suggested, to adopt a grave, direct and serious tone: ‘In a case so interesting as the errors of a great nation, and the calamities of great individuals, and feeling them so deeply as you profess to do, all manner of insinuation is improper, all jibe and nickname prohibited.’ As for the portrayal of Marie Antoinette, Francis considers it ‘pure foppery’. As he explains: ‘If she be a perfect female character, you ought to take your ground upon her virtues. If she be the reverse it is ridiculous in any but a lover to place her personal charms in opposition to her crimes.’¹ In the course of this correspondence, Francis contrasts the humane achievements of the Enlightenment with those priests, bishops and cardinals ‘which laid waste a province and founded a monastery’. Reminding Burke of the less chivalrous aspects of the ancien régime, Francis adds: ‘When the provinces are scourged to the bone by a mercenary and merciless military power, and every drop of its blood and substance extorted from it by the edicts of a royal council, the case seems very tolerable to those who are not involved in it.’²