[Burke, Edmund — French Revolution] | An Historical Sketch of the French Revolution

[Burke, Edmund — French Revolution]

An Historical Sketch of the French Revolution from its Commencement to the Year 1792. London: J. Debrett, 1792

8vo. Occasional light foxing. Half calf over marbled boards; joints beginning to crack, label beginning to peel from spine, covers a little faded and soiled, corners bumped.

First edition of this anonymous response to Burke's text on the French Revolution.

ESTC states that this work is frequently, but doubtfully, attributed to Sir James Mackintosh. It is an anonymous response to Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, espousing his sentiments but conceding that "some of them are carried a little too far." It gathers French sources together and asks the reader to study the primary accounts of the revolution from its origins up until the beginning of 1792. The author argues that differences in the French and British constitutions could explain why violent revolution had broken out in France but not in Britain.

Edmund Burke's political pamphlet on the French Revolution had been published in November 1790, attacking the French Revolution by contrasting it to the British constitution. It has been called the "most eloquent statement of British conservatism favoring monarchy, aristocracy, property, hereditary succession, and the wisdom of the ages."

Sir James Mackintosh was a Scottish historian and politician. He published his Vindiciae Gallicae: A Defence of the French Revolution and its English Admirers in early 1791, a reply to Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France. It opposed Burke's conservative anti-revolutionary views from the perspective of a philosophic liberal. However, the extreme bheaviour of the revolutionaries later caused him to agree with Burke. Mackintosh wrote to Burke on 22 December 1796, saying that: "From the earliest moments of reflexion your writings were my chief study and delight...The enthusiasm with which I then embraced them is now ripened into solid Conviction by the experience and meditation of more mature age. For a time indeed seduced by the love of what I thought liberty I ventured to oppose your Opinions without ever ceasing to venerate your character...I cannot say...that I can even now assent to all your opinions on the present politics of Europe. But I can with truth affirm that I subscribe to your general Principles; that I consider them as the only solid foundation both of political Science and of political prudence." Whether Mackintosh had changed his views in time to publish the present treatise in 1792 is unconfirmed.

REFERENCE:

ESTC T63093