Burke English Civil War

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Edmund Burke andthe English RevolutionJeffreyHart

IN HIS POEM Blood and the Moon, Yeatswrites of haughtier-headed Burke thatproved the s ta te a tree. Edmund Burkewould have relished the line, havingproved nothing of the sort . What Burkedid in the Reflections was to construct apowerful myth of English history, inwhich England settled down from prece-dent to precedent, unlike the violentnation across the Channel. H e wrotewhile the French Revolution was in itsearliest stages and wrote brilliantly,making permanent contributions t o po-litical philosophy. But he discreetlyavoided t h e fact that the parliamentaryeminence from which he spoke had beenborn in the cannon and musket fire of theseventeenthcentury English Revolution,which was finally consolidated duringthe reign of Robert Walpole 1720-1742).Before Walpole, England had had thepolitics of a banana republic.

Yeats might well have derived hisimage of the tree from the Reflectionsitself, where Burke provides an extendedmetaphor comparing British agitatorsand pamphleteers to grasshoppers andthe true and stable England to cowsgrazing under immemorial oaks.JEFFREYHARTs ProfessorEmeritus o f Englishat Dartmouth C ollege and the author o f seu-era1 books including Acts of Recovery andViscount Bolingbroke: Tory Humanist.

Because half a doze n grasshoppers undera fern make the fields ring with theirimportunate chink, whilst thousands ofgreat cattle, repose d beneath the shad owof the British oak and are silent, pray donot imagine that those who make thenoise are th e on ly inhabitants of the field,that of course the y are many in number,or that, after all they are other than th elittle, sh rivelled, meag er, hopping, thoughloud and troublesome. insects of the hour.

In this metaphor, the British oak repre-sents a society that has grown organi-cally, a slowly evolving and stable na-tional community. Somewhat unflatter-ingly here, the t rue Englishmen are thecows, silent and stolid, chewing the cud.Those organic British oaks, along withthe beautiful and vital Marie Antoinette,in another famous and mythic passage,are meant to stand over against the me-tallic and new sophisters,oeconomists,and calculators who are the enemies ofthe ancient order of Europe, allied withmoney interests and abstract politicaltheoreticians.

Burkes British oak has a consider-able l i terary history and, indeed,amounts to a natural symbol of tradi-tion. In ToPenshurst, Ben Jonson con-trasts the Sidney estate , which standstan ancient pile and has grown casuallyover the years, with the flashier estatesof the recently rich nobility, which are

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grudgd at by the local peasantry. TheSidney estate is described as being vir-tually part of the landscape, and its socia1 life reflects the cosmic chain of be-ing. The whole is epitomized by theSidney Oak, planted at the birth of thecourtier poet:

the Moon, Burke did not prove th estate a tree. Rather, h e made the s tatea tree in imaginative terms for his ownworthy rhetorical purposes. H e createda powerful myth by selecting from En-glish history such elements a s suited themyth, while neglecting cataclysmic

That taller tree which of a nut was setAt his great birth where all the MusesThere in the writhed bark are cut theOf many a Syluane taken with his

met .namesf lames .

In The Deserted Village by Burkesfriend Oliver Goldsmith, the tree be-comes an emblematic hawthorn bush,which represents the humble but or-ganic village, which, as much asJonsonsPenshurst, is part of the natural order:

The never-failing broo k the busy m illThe decent church that topt the neighbor-The haw thom e bush with feats beneathFor talking age and whispering lovers

ing hillthe shademade .

Opposed to the hawthorn bush andthe village life, Goldsmith arraigns themodern and metallic trades unfeelingtrain. Goldsmith of course, along withBurke, is part of Yeatss spiritual historyon that winding ancestral s tair in Bloodand the Moon, and the tree elsewheremakes strategic appearances in Yeats:

H o w b u t i n c u s t o m a n d c e r e m o n yA r e i n n o c e n c e a n d b e a u t y b o r n ?Ceremonys a name for the rich hornAnd custom for the spread ing Laurel tree.chestnut-tree great-rooted blossomer

Are you the lea[ the blossom or the bole?

events that would have called t he mythinto ser ious question.

Burke wishes his reader to believethat English history grew like a greatoak, evolving slowly and deviating fromprecedent only under the pressure ofdire necessity. His example of a grudg-ing concession to necessity is the Revo-lution of 1688.H e also uses his treatmentof 1688 to screen off the events of 1640-1660, when England was rocked by aconvulsive Civil War, King Charles I wasbeheaded, and Parliament establishedthe basis f0.r its eventual preeminence-control of taxation and expenditure. Inthe Reflections Burke barely alludes to1640-1660, and when he does so, it is towave th e bloody shirt. Dr. Prices objec-tionable sermon in praise of the FrenchRevolution reminds him of a sermondelivered in 1648:

That sermon is in a strain wh ich, I believe,has not b een heard in this kingdom in anyof th e pulpits which are tolerated or en-coura ged in it sinc e the year 1648, wh ena predecessor of Dr. Price, th e Rev. HughPeter s, m ade the vault of the Kings ownchapel at St. Jamess ring with the honorand privilege of the saints, wh o, with thehigh praises of God in their mou ths anda two-edged sword in their hands, andpunishments upon the people; to bindtheir kings with chains, and their nobleswith fetters of iron.A bit later, Burke reproves Dr. Price

and his Revolution Society for confusing1688 with 1648:

The gentlemen of the Old Jewry, in alltheir reason ingson the Revolutionof 1688,have a Revolution which happened inEngland abo ut forty years before and thet

In the Reflections however, and despiteYeatss memorable lines in Blood and

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late French Revolution so much beforetheir eyes and in their hearts that theyare Constantly confoundingall the threetogether.Yet, for all the horror with which he

But what does constitute a conditionof necessity? Burke begins by definingthe necessity of 1688 in such dramaticterms tha t one would conclude that itwould take the supposed genius of LordSomers to discern it.

views 1640-1660, that Revolution whichhappened in England established thebasis for the parliamentary system whichwas decisively consolidated in 1688andprovided the platform from which Burkespoke in 1790.

tttBurkes treatment of 1688 is central tothe Reflections and establishes his ex-emplary statesman, Lord Somers,as thehero of the book. Lord Somers indeed isa hero, not only of 1688 but of Burkestheory of knowledge in its relationshipto practical action. Unquestionably,Burke concedes, there was a t the Revo-lution, in the person of King William, asmall and temporary deviation from thestr ict order of a regular hereditary suc-cession. That is,King James I was over-thrown and fled the country. H e wasreplaced by a Dutchman, William, Princeof Orange. How did Parliament deter-mine that this smalldeviation was nec-essary? Lord Somers recognized it andpersuaded Parliament of its necessity.

In the very act, in which for a time, and ina single case, Parliament departed fromthe strict order of inheritance, in favor ofa prince, who though not next, was, how-ever, very near the lineof succession, it iscurious to observe how Lord Somers,who drew the bill called the Declarationof Right, has comported himself on thatdelicate occasion. It is curious to observewith what address this temporary solu-tion of continuity is kept from the eye,whilst all that could be found in this actnecessary to countenance the idea of ahereditary succession is brought forwardand fostered and made the most of by thisgreat man and by the legislature whofollowed him.

It would be to repeat a very trite story torecall to your memory all those circum-stances which demonstrated that theiraccepting King William was not properlya choice but, to all those who did notwish, in effect, to recall King James or todeluge their country in blood, and againto bring their religion, laws and libertiesinto the peril they had just escaped, itwas an act of necessity in the strictestmoral sense in which necessity can betaken.Yet Burke also understands that-

and let us concede him his description ofthe 1688 necessity-there are more dif-ficult determinations of necessity.

The speculative line of demarcation,where obedience ought to end and resis-tance begin, is faint, obscure, and noteasily definable. it is not a single act, or asingle event, which determines it. Cov-ernments must be abused and deranged,indeed, before it can be thought of, andthe prospect of the future must be as badas the experience of the past Times andoccasions, and provocations will teachtheir own lessons. The wise will deter-mine from the gravity of the case, theirritable, from sensibility to oppression,the high-minded, from disdain and indig-nation at abusive power in unworthyhands, the brave and bold, from love ofhonorable danger in a generous cause,but, with or without right, a revolutionwill be the very last resource of the think-ing and the good.We will return t o Lord Somers and to

Burkes theoryof howthe wise, the think-ing, and the good discern the line ofdemarcation that separates seditionfrom forbearance, but first we must ob-serve that Lord Somers in 1688is not theonly one keeping things from the eye, as

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defeatof the invading Scots under BonniePrince Charlie at the hands of t he Dukeof Cumberland at the Battle of Cullodenwas the Hanoverian succession finallysafe.This history does not much resembleBurkes slowly and grandly growing Brit-ish oak. Indeed, the historian J. H. Plumb,m The Origins o f Political Stability inEngland has argued persuasively thatthe vaunted stability of England was thehandiwork of Robert Walpole, leadingminister from 1720 o 1742.Until Walpole,England had a parliamentary sys tem inplace but not altogether secure, an insta-bility with the politics of a Tammanyboss. Walpole rendered elections less-frequent and, through hard cash fromthe Treasury-secret funds-made pposition much more expensive. UnderWalpole, England became a one-partystate, but the resulting stability laid thebasis for its later commercial and inter-national power.

If it be asked whether what occurred inEngland in the seventeenth century wasarevolution properlysocalled, of coursethe answer depends on what you defineas a revolution. However, it is arguablethat this was the English revolutionagainst the attenuated medieval order,as was the French Revolution. HughTrevor-Roper has given an excellent evo-cation of the trial of King Charles I:

On January 30, 1649, King Charles I wasexecuted, and cries of horror arose froman outraged world .... N o judge would sitin the new High Court of Justice. Soldiersdominated its sessions in WestminsterHall, and its President wore a bullet-hatthroughout the proceedings. Wh e n hecalled upon the King to answer the chargemade in behalf of the good people ofEngland, Lady Fairfax called from thegallery, No, not half of them. Its a lie Her words were cut short. Down with thewhores, shoot them ordered the cole

ne1 of the guard.When the King demandedto be heard, the rhythmical cry of JUStice, justice, execution, execution drowned his words, as arranged by a Pu-ritan clergyman; and when the death war-rant was drawn up, intimidation and forg-ery were required to complete the list ofsignaturesOn the day of execution staples were fixedto the platform in Whitehall to tie the Kingdown in case he struggled-an absurdprecaution, as anyone should have knownwho knew him. Soldiers around the scaf-fold prevented him speaking to the crowd,who expressed their indignationwith sul-len groans and had to be dispersed bycavalry. Even the Army shrank from theact they carried out; a promise of 100pounds and promotion could not find asoldier to be executioner, and the com-mon hangman who carried out the sen-tence-a skilled practitioner who hadprepared himself in childhood by decapi-tating cats and dogs-died of remorsewithin a few months.I think we must conclude that in hisReflections Burke is defending the con-

solidated results of the English Revolu-tion of the seventeenth century, a con-solidation completed on behalf of Parlia-ment in 1688 and later made secure byWalpole. Burke had to ignore the revolu-tion that had constructed his own plat-form as a House of Commons man. Whenhe wrote the Reflections he had nothingto offer as guidance to the French, whohad just commenced their own revolu-tion.

VIWhile Burke, in the Reflections engagedin some historical sleight of hand, hedoes set forth avaluable heory of knowl-edge of politics, and human behaviorgenerally, a theory that has been devel-oped and expanded upon through ourown day. Here again, Lord Somers iscentral, the statesman who recognizedthe necessity of deposing James 11. Thequestion is,then, just how Somers recog-

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ous to the rationalist mind. Burke ar-gued that it is folly

To cast away the coat of prejudice, and toleave nothing but the naked reason; be-cause prejudice, with its reason, h a s amotive to give action to that reason, andan affection which will give it perma-nence. Prejudice is of ready applicationin an emergency; it previously engagesthe mind in a steady course of wisdomand virtue, and does not leave the manhesitating n the moment of decision,skeptical, puzzled, and unresolved. Prejudicerenders a mans virtue his habit; and nota series of unconnected acts. Throughjust prejudice, his duty becomes a part ofhis nature.The figure of King Lear lurks behind

the text of theReflections, Lear, naked ontha t heath; in Burkes telling rhetoric, allthedecent draperyof life is to be rudelytorn off. All the super-added ideas, fur-nished from the wardrobe of a moralimagination, which the hear t owns andth e understanding ratifies as necessaryto cover the defectsof our naked shiver-ing nature are to be rudely torn off.In his distinction between the sort ofknowledge possessed by Lord Somersand the sort of knowledge that can beformulated as rules and principles, Burkebelongs to a skeptical and prudentialconservative tradition we may associ-ate with Montaigne, Hume, Sa mue lJohnson, Walter Bagehot, and notably,in our own day, Michael Oakeshott. Iwould add to it the political theory andpractice of such m e n as aniel Websterand Henry Clay, and of course there aremany other exemplars.It is at the core of Oakeshotts veryconsiderable body of writing on politicaltheory that the most important kinds ofknowledge arenot transmittable throughlanguage-that, indeed, to write downthe sort of knowledge gained throughexperience is perforce to abridge it, pro-vide only a crib. In his famous essayRationalism in Politics, Oakeshott ex-

plored this dualistic epistemology withhis usual elegance-it is important thathe, like Burke,was an aesthetician-andit is not difficult to discern behind thefollowing passage, which I cite at somelength because it is so telling, the ghostof Lord Somers.

Technical knowledge, we have seen, issusceptible of formulation in rules, prin-ciples, directions, maxims-comprehen-sively, in propositions. It is possible towrite down technical knowledge in a book.Consequently, t does not surpriseus thatwhen an artist writes about his art, hewrites only about the technique of his art.This is so, not because he is ignorant ofwhat may be called aesthetic element,orthinks it unimportant, but because whathe has to say about that he has said al-ready if he is a painter) in his pictures,and he knows no other way of saying it.And t h e same is true when a religious manwrites about his religion or a cook aboutcookery. And it may be observed that thischaracter of being susceptible of preciseformulation gives to technical knowledgeat least the appearance of certainty: itappears to be possible to be certain abouta technique. On the other hand, it is acharacteristic of practical knowledge thatit is not susceptible of formulation of thiskind. Its normal expressionis in a custom-ary or traditional way of doing things, or,simply, in practice. And this gives it theappearance of imprecision and conse-quently of uncertainty, of being a matterof opinion, of probabilityrather than truth.It is, indeed, aknowledge that isexpressedin taste or connoisseurship, lacking rigid-ity and ready for the impress of the mindof the learner.

Technical knowledge can be learnedfrom a book; it can be learned in a corre-spondence course. Moreover, much of itcan be learned by heart, repeated byrote, and applied mechanically: he logicof the syllogism is a technique o thiskind. Technical knowledge, in short, canbe both taught and learned in the sim-plest meanings of these words. On theother hand, practical knowledge can nei-

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ther be taught nor learned, but only im-parted and acquired. It exists only inpractice, and the only wayto acquire it isby apprenticeship to a master-not be-cause the master can teach it (he cannot),but because it can be acquired only bycontinuous contact with one who is per-petually practising it. In the arts and innatural science what normally happensis that the pupil, in being taught and inlearning the technique from his master,discovers himself to have acquired alsoanother sort of knowledge than merelytechnical knowledge, without it ever hav-ing been precisely imparted and oftenwithout being able to say precisely whatit is. Thus a pianist acquires artistry aswell as technique, a chess-player styleand insight into the game as well as aknowledge of the moves, and a scientistacquires (among other things) the sort ofjudgement which tells him when his tech-nique is leading him astray and the con-noisseurship which enables him to dis-tinguish the profitable from the unprofit-able directions to explore.

Now,as I understand it, Rationalism isthe assertion that what 1 have called prac-tical knowledge is not knowledge at all,the assertion that, properly speaking,there is no knowledge which is not tech-nical knowledge. The Rationalist holdsthat the only element of knowledge in-volved in any human activity is technicalknowledge, and that what I have calledpractical knowledge is really only a sortof nescience which would be negligible ifit were not positively mischievous. Thesovereigntyof reason, for the Rational-ist, means the sovereignty of technique.

The heart of the matter is the pre-occupation of the Rationalist with cer-tainty. Technique and certainty are, forhim, inseparably joined because certainknowledge is, for him, knowledge whichdoes not require to look beyond itself forits certainty: knowledge, that is, whichnot only ends with certainty but beginswith certainty and is certain throughout.And this is preciselywhat technical knowl-edge appears to be. I t seems to be a self-complete sort of knowledge because it

seems to range between an identifiableinitial point (where it breaks in upon sheerignorance) and an identifiable terminalpoint, where it is complete, as in learningthe rules of a new game. It has the aspectofknowledge that can be contained whollybetween the two covers of a book, whoseapplicationis,as nearlyas possible, purelymechanical, and which does not assumea knowledge not itself provided in thetechnique. For example, the superiorityof an ideology over a tradition of thoughtlies in its appearance of being self-con-tained. It can be taught best to thosewhose minds are empty; and if it is to betaught to one who already believes some-thing, the first step of the teacher must beto administer a purge, to make certainthat all prejudices and preconceptionsare removed, to lay his foundation uponthe unshakable rock of absolute igno-rance. In short, technical knowledge a ppears to be the only kind of knowledgewhich satisfies the standard of certaintywhich the Rationalist has chosen.

Now, have suggested that the knowl-edge involved in every concrete activityis never solely technical knowledge. Ifthis is true, it would appear that the errorof the Rationalist is of a simple sort-theerror of mistaking a part for the whole, ofendowing a part with the qualities of thewhole. But the error of the Rationalistdoes not stop there. f this great illusion isthe sovereignty of technique, he is no lessdeceived by the apparent certainty oftechnical knowledge. The superiority oftechnical knowledge lay in its appear-ance of springing from pure ignoranceand ending in certain and complete knowl-edge, its appearance of both beginningand ending with certainty. But, in fact,this is an illusion.As with every other sortof knowledge, learning a technique doesnot consist in getting rid of pure igno-rance, but in reforming knowledge whichis already there. Nothing, not even themost nearly self-contained technique (therules of a game), can in fact be impartedto an empty mind: and what is imparted isnourished by what is already there. Aman who knows the rules of one game

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Authority is the structure or the innerorder of an association, whether this bepolitical, religious,o r cultural, and is givenits root in social function, tradition, orallegiance. Status is the individuals posi-tion in the hierarchy of prestige and influ-ence that characterizes every commu-nity or association. The sacred includesthe mores, the non-rational, the religious,and ritualistic ways of behavior that arevalued beyond whatever utility they maypossess. Alienation is a historical per-spective within which each man is seenas estranged, anomic, and rootless whencut off from the best of community andmoral purpose.

will, on this account, rapidly learn therules of another game; and a man alto-gether unfamiliar with rulesof any kindif such can be imagined) would be a most

unpromising pupil. And just as the self-made man is never literally self-made, butdepends upon a certain kind of societyand upon a large unrecognized inherit-ance, so technical knowledge is never, infact, self-complete, and can be made toappear so only if we forget the hypoth-eses with which it begins. And i f its self-completeness is illusory, the certaintywhich was attributed to it on account ofits self-completeness is also an illusion.Vtl

n Th e Soc io logica l Tradi t ion 1966), afundamental work of first-rate intelli-gence, Robert Nisbet writes a s an histo-rian of ideas, but a s more than that. Likeone of his masters, A. 0 Lovejoy, heproduces by bringing other writers ideasinto conjunction with an accession ofknowledge. The whole he creates ismorethan the sum of his parts. In this majorwork, he discusses European sociologyin its formative period, 1830-1890, itsclassical age, as he calls i t . In the fore-ground here are the works of Tocqueville,Marx, Weber, Tonnies, Simmel, andDurkheim. Outside the historical timeframe of this book, but most certainlywaiting in the wings, are such continua-tors of the great themes as Talcott Par-sons and Robert K. Merton. But also,back behind the classical age of sociol-ogy, as Nisbet makes clear , is the tower-ing figure of Burke of t he Ref lec t ions:

What are the essential unit-ideas of soci-ology, those which, above any others,give distinctiveness to sociology in itsjuxtaposition? These are, believe, five:Community authority status the sacredand alienation Community includes butlocal community to encompass religion,work, family, and culture. It refers to so-cial bonds characterized by emotionalcohesion, depth, continuity, and fullness.

I t is part of the genuine greatness ofThe Soc io logica l Tradi t ion that Nisbetdemonstrates that within the classicalsociologists, virtually all of whom weremodernizers and lived during their his-torical moment, there nevertheless livedthese ancient and traditional concernsabout the nature of man and society, andNisbet sees that out of this conflict wasborn the vision of the classical sociolo-gist.

But he sees more as well. H e sees thatthey were not statisticians, but artists .

Can anyone believe that Tonnies typol-o y of Cemeinschaft and CesellschaftWebers version of ra t ion a l i za t ionSimmels image of m e t r o p o l i s andDurkheims perspective of anomie camefrom the logico-empirical analysis as thisis understood today? Merely to ask thequestion is to know the answer. Plainlythese men were not working with finiteand ordered problems in front of them.They were not problem-solving at all.Each was, with deep intuition, with pro-found imaginative grasp, reacting to theworld around him, even as does the art-ist, and, also like the artist, objectifyinginternal and only partly conscious statesof mind.The proof of such a theory of knowl-

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Burke English Civil War