The Old Regime & The French Revolution
Class Notes
His view on BurkeBurke
Burke
Background
tended to be progressive
e.g. in favor of Am Rev, Irish independence
but still wrote against French Revolution
wrote [[Burke, Reflections on the Revolution]] against it
:
"Even Burke failed to understand it. "You wish to correct the abuses of your government," he said to the French, "but why invent novelties? Why not return to your old traditions? Why not confine yourselves to a resumption of your ancient liberties? Or, if it was not possible to recover the obliterated features of your original constitution, why not look towards England? There you would have found the ancient common law of Europe." Burke did not see that what was taking place before his eyes was a revolution whose aim was precisely to abolish that "ancient common law of Europe," and that there could be no question of putting the clock back." (de Toqueville, pg 21)
Summary
DeTocqueville writes of the French Revolution in a contemporary time. He mentions that many of the people who were involved were still alive as he wrote. He thought that the Revolution followed many of the same lines as a religious revolution (e.g. it viewed men and their rights and duties much the same way as a religion would). In addition, he seemed to argue that the Revolution did not replace as much of the old monarchical government as people thought it did. He talked about several aspects of government (its paternal nature, the immunity of public servants, its centralization) and how these aspects did not begin with the Revolution, but were rather holdovers from the previous regime. Even the French countryside had moved away from feudalism before the Revolution began, and so even feudalism was not a spoil of the Revolution.