In Our Time - Edmund Burke 2010

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 were 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 stylish law written attack which provoked enormous debate Thomas Paine 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 orders 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 our 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 Key and recently appointed professor of politics at the University of Sydney karna Brian 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 monopolized most of the wealth political power and that Catholic people enjoyed very severe a 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 been 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 centered to a Quaker school just outside of Dublin and this was an interesting decision because at at 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 school teacher who was a Quaker and a pacifist and who told him to think very sympathetically about various kinds of Protestant dissent 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 that's quite a contrast is in a tiny elite in Dublin and he's living the life of the Protestant elite fairly rich compared surrounded by serious poverty see his Roman Catholic poverty he understands that we are warned assumes through his money goes to Quaker school which is a fascinating choice where he brings 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 fifteen or sixteen and Trinity College of it and is a is a brilliant scholar he's obviously been well taught at disc waker school he's been very well taught and his father sent 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 anger sizing 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 that on the legal career because there was a literary streak in him from the beginning he came out of his starting blocks with 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 and tastes how do we form ideas of what is beautiful how do ideas of tastes relate generally to society how can consensus about notions of taste in literature form the basis of other kinds of social consensuses 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 greater great Shakespearean and applied that to come 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 and but do we know how his career got started one of his friends refer 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 bulling Brooks five-volume works appear in the same year but the Bolingbroke once was described by dr. Johnson as having aimed a blunderbuss 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 uh 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 a represent arises not supposed to fall in love it may not be a glass inators from the political writers in this country they say we fall in love all the time especially it's the 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 lipstick to the lover he married a Catholic tin to well there is some controversy about this 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 a very unusual for for these circles yeah I'm just what I mean just it isn't a big point it's just that he's very interesting that he comes over he's an Anglican all his life is appropriately protests the Protestant cause and it's boring it's very interesting that he marries someone who like his mother's a Catholic we seem to get from the notes I drove few items so that's what happened and there we go the Ireland this wasn't disappear and there's no no absolutely then he published his work at the vindication of natural society 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 fly of course our because uh it is it's his debut appearance and it's written it seems to mimic but also to satirize Bolingbroke is written by an aging Lord to an aging Noble to a young Lord and it's themes are scandalous in there you will find in the vindication of the 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 the base of any political order so natural society the propensity to natural society is is outlined here human beings as gregarious there is the whole idea in this vindication of natural society that all institutions are our time space specific that is that they're they're contextual they're 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 sigh like I could say about his reflections on 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 Sultan's and so on and democracy which for him is vicious giddy he likens it to the 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 quiz custodiet Ipsos custodes everyone doesn't in this program knows what that means yes good so who will guard the guard 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 burr 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 asserted a lot of people didn't get there was a satire but never mind how did it set the how did it set out his stall 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 a preoccupation is really by picking up on what John Keane said thus to say it's a satire on Bolingbroke Bonnie Brooks works had been published in 1754 and what Burke was specifically targeting was his day ism daisen was the view basically that that nature was a systemically ordered whole set in motion by a deity but it could it could do without or dispensed with revelation and was skeptical about priests craft and also doubtful of the immortality of the soul Burks view was therefore that this is basically a high road to atheism and his preoccupation with deism asks facilitating atheism was something that stayed with him through the rest of his career and appears again in the 1790s because what one of it when the core points of his attack in the reflections on the French feel is off is on the assumption that they're religious so I think that core preoccupation is something that established in 1756 is something that is still within the 1790s did it establish him even though it was anonymous who would probably get rounded it was him yes anybody did it did he feel established as a writer in the public domain with that well people didn't know it was him rina no his all his early works were published anonymously and there was that there was a various forms of writing which he gay engaged in the 1750s the vindication was the first his next published work was 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 was probably completed around about 53 and it actually been working on it since his college days but look then anyone just as a minor mentions not to was published anonymously that was published anonymously he also wrote a an acid towards abridgement of English history which wasn't published but he basically it was an anonymous production the 17 papers I never got that out the way I was wrong about that um it seems anyway a philosophical inquiry into the origins of our ideas of the sublime and beautiful doesn't seem to be something that would come the pen of a political philosopher and it had a big impact imminent well it is it's his probably his second most famous work but as Conan O'Brien was was pointing out really Burke began not as a political adventurer but I was a literary adventurer and really wanted to develop an establishing literary career as a result or as an outgrowth of that abyssion he penned the philosophical inquiry what did what distinction did he make between the beautiful and the sublime right what's tricky and debated but in a nutshell starting back and looking at the work it's it's it's a philosophical study of the nature of the human mind but focusing on particular aspects a particular aspect really at the human mind thus 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 thus the sublime or the other hand the beautiful is the response to something that is orderly or quaint something that inspires affection attachment love but trace 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 at a sudden unexpected move but 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 Jared Hamilton who's a British MP the late 1750s and he actually then goes to Ireland with him because Hamilton ends up being a secretary to the Lord who turns in Ireland for about 18 months so his political career really begins then horror that ends in failure on and acrimony really but Burke is then taken up in 1765 by the markers of Rockingham and becomes his secretary was rocking that and from July 1765 basically is having 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 a way he gets in he gets in through a burrow under the control went over c4 went over under the control of Lord Varney yeah can you give us John Keane some idea of the political situation in the 17-6 is what were what were the Parliament in London one of the big issues that were coming at them because he got embroiled in politics he rolled up his sleeves it was in the house he heard about is the great made in the speech he would speak until dawn and so he was in there what what were they what were the big issues coming their way well I think the one that began to gain ground prominence attract the whole political 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 the Commonwealth of Nations that would come later his idea is that um British gentlemen English gentlemen at the core should display magnanimity so the abuse of power in the colonies was forbidden he railed against him as we were yeah 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 are its these themes that are tested in particular it's the administration the Tory administration of Lord North that encounters all sorts of crises in the American colonies in the governance of 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 in its future ank ma'am what was Burke's political of his affiliation when he entered Parliament Karen what wood can you give us some idea who his friends were what work 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 he could easily I think have found another way through into political power but he stuck with the rocking and Whigs and what he did actually was to make a virtue of that that oppositional position in the later seventeen 60s early 70s by arguing the case that politics had become unbalanced and lopsided 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 a politician should be accountable there should be there should be transparent reasons why they're elected why they hold the offices that they do and there should be some sense that they're accountable for their actions to their peak 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 and the sort of landscape of his mind because we're talking about a man who who was befriended was friends with Samuel Johnson was in some in Johnson's Club Mekka on Monday nights and I was literary and political but literary based - fraid of few friend of David Hume a philosopher man whose friend of Adam Smith's a great economist so these people were his friends he's I suppose they thought of each other as equals at Gibbon the historian and so this is a rich mix isn't it that he it's a very rich mix so during this period Berk is starting to think very deeply about political economy and to imbibe ideas of free trade and a different kind of vision of political economy through his contacts with writers like humans Smith whom you mentioned he's thinking also I think about how civilization progresses what it means to be part of a modern commercial society how politics should interact with that a 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 Burke and later life felt that moral principles are not something that actually evolved 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 modernizing sort of wigleigh that Burke has in this period Richard Burke could you underfunded a little in in terms of his relationship with Adam Smith for instance under free-market idea well sure I would say generally the unusual thing about Burke is that he was sort of highly literate and intellectually engaged politician operating you know the center of high politics and encountering various major intellectual figures in the 18th century Smith is an obvious case Rousseau's and other montes gives another and you mean he was the earliest reviewer of Rousseau's early works in the annual register which he edited between 70 58 and 65 he was an early respondent to Montesquieu as well who whose ideas he incorporated into various of his writings and subsequently his speeches and of course Adam Smith is than 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 and 1759 and also then wrote Smith a letter of our congratulation where he said that is approved for Smith's ideas about morality and subsequently of course he becomes from it he becomes familiar with his his work on political economy after and the worthlessness 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 for him went in for remarkable eloquence and great stamina the number of hours they spoke all night all night talking 'he's 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 us to Burke the position Burke began to assume yes for many a something like a a marital squabble developed with the Englishman of the American colonies as firk bite to refer to them as and Taxation matters were central hmm 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 a by English gentleman and part of the settlement with the American colonies was their right to tax themselves and not to have the power of the the 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 um political power is granted on trust and trust implies accountability and what he saw developed from 1773 1774 onwards was the abuse of power by the Georgian monarchy by Westminster and he didn't like it so I kinda Brian let's get to Burke's actions these action what was unfolding in America was the tig colonists let's call them that were 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 conciliation with the colonies he gives those speeches in the House of Commons but he also a little untypical II 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 that in essence they could be allowed to tax themselves and the British government should not over insist on its rightful sovereignty over the colonies because it will simply alienate the American colonists from the British family so that's a political consideration with behind it is a philosophical barrier which John has been referring to this morality the light-touch they're looking yes can you develop yes that there's that there's a there's a morality that 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 kind of allegiance because obviously with the Atlantic Ocean in between Britain and America is very difficult to enforce allegiance so what he is saying is that the British government ought to ensure a colonial allegiance to the centre by extending a sense of freedom as a kind of cult 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 descent and if you don't recognize that kind of vociferous separatist logic of Protestantism then you are going to drive the colonists out of the Empire all together and these printed those features were received with a great rupture in in America and he had big influence fair - and with some antagonise antagonism in his own country so that was he was walking the first of many tight ropes here what is a great British crisis really the loss of the American colonies um I think it's um it's important to recognize that Burke wasn't supporting the American Revolution and certainly wasn't supporting this accession 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 British government given the liberty-loving tendencies of the North American colonists either you would have to conciliate their preferences in some within some reasonable framework or as you 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 bridge British particularly English we're making a big mistake here in order to British making ready to shake both politically and militarily and philosophically yeah right to Iran they got it wrong yeah in essence we I want to get to the French Revolution John Keane but just to show that Adam pointedly listens the consistency of Burke and the way that he took on every big issue the bit the India became a big issue and he because he brought Warren Hastings a trial that took seven years as a program in itself it's a series itself it's a des broadcasting himself but his view of India and East India Company is germane to what we're going to discover it was very similar just view of America as I understand it yes here um Burke devotes at least seven volumes of speeches and papers on on India the gist of the problem is this that India which is in a way the Englishman's the white Englishman's burden is special because there is a company the East India Company which has granted a license and subject 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 ki neologism of the 1750s which Bert repeatedly uses disorderly ruled 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 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 he thinks that uh through the House of Commons that Hastings ought to be reined in the East India Company should be reined in at one point he refers to the East India Company as an oppressive irregular capricious unsteady rapacious and Pech you lating 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 a very clearly the fear that characters like Hastings the symbols of despotic power will as it were a boomerang back into the heartlands of the Empire and this fills him with fear so we know where we are with his taking big issues on but the biggest maybe is an excellent colonel Bryan in 1790 his best-known work reflections on the revolution in France now what moved him to write that what are you saying what was its impact he was aware of events unfolding in France from 1789 and he took quite some time to respond it was up to the stolen evil this was after the storming of the Bastille this was after the the state's 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 for democracy last night not entirely democracy but bought a form of elected government and also after they'd confiscated church lands and that 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 xvi 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 on along the kinds of lines that you've been arguing in the Indian context and the American context and Burke 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 modernization 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 than John McCain can you just take that his argument even further than Cara Stagner so listen 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 jaqobis to in the attempt to transform to uproot a whole social and political order his great despise I could say in fear of democracy the tumult ignorance the disorder less easy to order him 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 simplified and therefore you distort it and you're in trouble yes you do but in the reflections the 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 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 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 best-seller in certain circles 17,000 coverage in the first year hardback yes good sales nothing like Tom Payne's rights of man become bystander memory was pitched at 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 Britain's two gentlemen King George the third thought that it was a wonderful work in defense of gentlemen there an appeal to their Englishness to their love of freedom their respect for order and law and of course God Richard Burke isn't it there was thought to be by many people a contradiction and especially the young poets had thought that Burke sublime and beautiful Burke in favor of the American independence was after their own heart at 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 they thought and so did you see a great contradiction between here the view he took over the American independent and the French his view on the early stages as Karen pointed out this is way before the guillotine the terror and Robespierre that lot see a contradiction there well Burke was as you say accused of apostasy by various theories in the 1790s including former political associates most notably Fox but also other figures like Wordsworth and Coleridge whom you mentioned he was accused of apostasy or betraying his own principles for two reasons really he was associated with supporting dissenters to number one and number two he's a support who's associated with sorta supporting the American colonists the American Revolution was associated with a bid for Liberty Pro French revolutionary politicians of Britain in the early 1790s also associated the French Revolution with bid for Liberty and therefore they thought if he supported one surely you should support the other equally if you'd supported the claims of dissenters in the 1770s and seventeen days which Burkhart why was he so antagonist and antagonistic towards them in the reflections bearing in mind 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 you politics should be based on 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 a bit an event without precedent that couldn't really be a contradiction between view she 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 was yeah I mean Charles James Fox ended up in tears in the House of Commons out there breach thinking that Burke was betraying what they both had stood for but I think it's to really ask the question one has to know exactly what it was that appalled him about events in France I mean news puddings up on the colossal strain you take nan Warren Hastings he'd lost seven years of his life there he was now taking that French Revolution and his greatest friends the great orator Fox the idol was turning against him the poet so we don't yet they were turning against him he's he's is really taking a lot of risks that Carol and um one of the reaction the reaction is coming to confess the first we may briefly mention is the first is Mary Wollstonecraft 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 in progress within English history starting with medieval chivalry and evolving to the modern day now from a female point of view chivalry isn't quite appalling but also she says that there's something kind of gothic and excessively rooted in history and I'm willing to recognize 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 burb treats monarchy so 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 mystic mystique of history and mystique of aristocracy and monarchy in verse writing the pain Pines 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 overlaps between Burke and pain Burke once told a friend humorously we hunt in pairs it's a it's an underdeveloped idea I mean they hunted in pairs against despotism against arrogance but in rights of man one can see this split that develops within the the Whiggish camp and it is and pain is very much on the side of Richard Price who was the inspire of Burke's reflection and the future of Mary Wollstonecraft but where's our time for that I am so pain stakes our position that rejects or 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 of the revolution Burke found that anathema what would you say I should Burke your name sex Maine 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 by an early translation by friedrich guns of the reflections against himself is Secretary to imagination so there's a clear direct impact on on European politics by a violet root 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 sure to rush you thank you very much for galloping through that that was a lot to chew off and thank you very much for taking it on

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Published: Sat May 14 2016