Reading Burke’s Vindication of Natural Society as targeting Rousseau insinuates continuity between Burke’s preoccupations in that work and his later opposition to Rousseau as supposedly also based on radical state-of-nature arguments. But neither contextual nor intra-textual evidence supports any Rousseau—Vindication connection, and the putative link implicitly misreads Burke’s preoccupation in the Vindication , the grounds of his critique of Rousseau, and the role Burke ascribes to the latter in the revolution. The real target of the Vindication was Bolingbroke’s application of philosophical rationalism to religion. This kind of argument he only later came to see applied to politics. Burke’s later opposition to Rousseau is based not on the revolutionaries’ (dubious) claim that Rousseau endorsed their radical state-of-nature and natural rights discourse, but on Rousseau’s espousal of a new moral psychology opposed to Christian deontology. This was the ‘revolution in manners’ which made the revolution possible and for which Rousseau provided a philosophical underpinning.
I. Burke does not use the term ‘ideology’ or its cognates, which were indeed not invented until shortly after his death. But he clearly has a concept of ideology, indeed the notion that the social power and import of ideas could be quite different from their literal or originally intended meanings is central to his critique of natural rights theory. So too is his insight that certain ideas are more easily taken up by some social groups than by others. He observes that the characteristics of revolutionary ideas are very similar to those of religious movements such as the Reformation.
2.
Burke ( 1989) Reflections on the Revolution in France, in Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, General editor Paul Langford, vol. 8, p. 136. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
3.
Burke ( 1991) First Letter on a Regicide Peace, in Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, gen. ed. Paul Langford, vol. 9, p. 241. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
4.
Burke (1989) Observations on the Conduct of the Minority, in Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, gen. ed. Paul Langford, vol. 8, p. 438. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
5.
Rousseau, Contrat Social , in J.-J. Rousseau (1964 ) Œuvres Complètes, vol. 3, pp. 393, 406. Paris: Gallimard. Also, Rousseau ( 1973) The Social Contract and the Discourses: A Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, pp. 230, 240. London: Dent.
6.
Burke to unknown, Jan. I790, in (I958) The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, vol. 6, p. 81. Cambridge and Chicago: Cambridge University Press.
7.
The Philosophical Enquiry was published on 27 April I757. The 2nd edn, in which Burke owns his authorship of the piece, was not published until I6 Dec. Indeed the anonymous Account of the European Settlements in America, a collaborative work written with his ‘kinsman’ Will, and in which Burke’s share remains unclear, had preceded the Enquiry by 26 days. William B. Todd (I964) A Bibliography of Edmund Burke, pp. 34, 26, 28. London: Hart-Davis. The Vindication is conventionally regarded as Burke’s first published work. However, he had as a student published work in the short-lived periodical he created and edited, The Reformer, as well, possibly, as some poetry. See Todd, items I and 2. Selections of these early writings are to be found in Arthur P. I. Samuels (I923) Early Life, Correspondence, and Writings of the Rt Hon. Edmund Burke. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. And in H. V. F. Somerset (I957) A Notebook of Edmund Burke. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
8.
Burke (1998) A Vindication Of Natural Society, ed. David Womersley, p. 7. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
9.
Somerset (n. 7), p. 7I.
10.
Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs in Burke (I888) Burke’s Works, 6 vols, vol. 3, p. 86; my emphasis. London: Bohn.
11.
Ibid. vol. 3, p. 8I.
12.
Both the Gentleman’s Magazine and the Journal Encyclopédique missed the irony, and even those, such as Richard Hurd, who saw it, thought that it was argued so well that it was in danger of failing to make its point. William Godwin, who knew it to be ironic, but sympathized with the arguments held up to ridicule, admired the way ‘evils of the existing political institutions are displayed with incomparable force of reasoning and lustre of eloquence.’ See F. P. Lock (I998) Edmund Burke, p. 85. Oxford: Clarendon. On modern contested readings see the exchange between Rothbard and Weston. Murray Rothbard (I958) ‘A Note on Burke’s Vindication of Natural Society’, Journal of the History of Ideas I9: II3-I8. J. C. Weston, Jr. (I958) ‘The Ironic Purpose of Burke’s Vindication Vindicated’, Journal of the History of Ideas I9: 435-4I.
13.
The intellectual biography with the fullest account of these events is Jeffrey Hart (I965)Viscount Bolingbroke, Tory Humanist, chs 2 and 3. London and Toronto: Toronto University Press.
14.
For not publishing the works in his own lifetime, Johnson famously accused Bolingbroke of scurrility in ‘charging a blunderbuss against religion and morality’ and of cowardice in that ‘he had not the resolution to fire it off himself, but left half a crown to a beggarly Scotchman [Mallet] to draw the trigger after his death’. Cited from Boswell (I934-50) Life of Johnson, 6 vols, vol. I, p. 268. Oxford: Clarendon Press. In Burke (n. 8), p. 2.
15.
Burke (n. 8), p. 3.
16.
Ibid p. 4.
17.
Richard B. Sewall (1942) ‘An Early Manuscript Translation of Rousseau’s Second Discours’, Modern Language Notes, 57(4): 272.
18.
Frank O’Gorman ( 1973) Edmund Burke, p. 18. London: Unwin.
19.
Lock (n. I2), p. 87.
20.
Ian Harris (ed.) (1993) Burke, Pre-revolutionary Writings, pp. xx-xxi. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. David Womersley, in his edn, provides an exception to this.
21.
C.C. O’Brien ( 1992) The Great Melody, pp. 449-50. London: Minerva. Peter J. Stanlis (1990) Edmund Burke, the Enlightenment and Revolution, ch. 5, passim. New Brunswick, NJ, and London: Transaction Publishers.
22.
Gourevitch translation (I986) First and Second Discourses tr. V. Gourevitch, p. I38. New York: Harper Row. The two parallel pairs are to be found in an appendix to Richard B. Sewall (I938) ‘Rousseau’s Second Discourse in England from I755 to I762’, Philological Quarterly I7(2) (April): III.
23.
As he put it in his later explicatory preface: ‘what would become of the World if the Practice of all moral Duties, and the Foundations of Society, rested upon having their Reason made clear and demonstrative to every Individual?’ Burke (n. 8), p. 5.
24.
Gourevitch (n. 22), p. 138.
25.
S.S.B. Taylor (1963) ‘Rousseau’s Contemporary Reputation in France’, Studies in Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century27: 1545-74. Richard B. Sewall (1937) ‘Rousseau’s First Discourse in England’, PMLA52(3) (Sept.): pp. 908 and 911.
26.
J.-J. Rousseau (1761) Eloisa; or a Series of Original Letters, tr. W. Kenrick, London. A second edn. followed in the same year.
27.
Read’s Weekly Journal (I9 Jan. I75I), cited in Sewall (n. 25), p. 909.
28.
Sewall (n. 22) notes the import of JJR’s Œuvres Diverses, which contained both Discourses, advertised in the Monthley Review I8 (Jan. I758): 96. But this is too late for it to have been available to Burke during the composition of the Vindication. James H. Warner (1933) ‘The Reaction in England to Rousseau’s Two Discours’, PMLA48(2): pp. 47I-87, 479.
29.
L. G. Mitchell in (I989) Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, gen. ed. Paul Langford, vol. 8, p. I. Oxford: Oxford University Press. He marshals a range of evidence - including Madame Duffand’s observation that ‘il parle notre langue avec le [sic] plus grande difficulté’ and Burke’s own professed reluctance to speak it to émigrés.
30.
Horace Walpole, no great fan of Burke’s, relates, archly but revealingly, that Burke in I773, was returned from disputing with the philosophes in Paris, where he was so much the mode ‘that it grew the fashion to be Christians’. Walpole to Lady Osssory, II Mar. I773, quoted O’Brien (n. 2I), p. 392, who disputes Mitchell’s judgment on this (as on many another) issue.
31.
Richard B. Sewall (1942) ‘An Early Manuscript Translation of Rousseau’s Second Discourse’, Modern Language Notes57(4) (April): 271-3. The MS is in the Yale University Library.
32.
There is no DNB entry for Farringdon.
33.
The Abbé Réné Vertot d’Auboef (I754) L’origine de la grandeur de la court de Rome. London. Vertot was born in Normandy in I655. A sometime monk, he left for secular orders and became secretary to the Duc d’Orleans and wrote, in addition to this title, political histories of Portugal and Sweden.
34.
Sewall (n. 3I), p. 27I. Dodsley’s biographer claims Burke knew him well from as early as I752: Ralph Straus (I9I0) Robert Dodsley, p. 254. London. Cited Burke (n. 6), vol. I, p. I27.
35.
Joseph Emin described meeting Burke in the winter of I755-6 and earning money by copying out the Vindication and the Enquiry. The dates are approximate, but still tend towards the view that the work was substantially complete well before the publication date. Joseph Emin, Autobiography, pp. 89-9I, cited in Burke (n. 6), vol. I, p. I2I.
36.
Vaughan (I9I5) Rousseau: Political Writings, 2 vols, vol. I, p. I4. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. The situation is further complicated by Rousseau’s claim that two MS copies in French were circulating in England in late I754. He writes to M. Rey preparing his French text: ‘ce qui me fâcheroit d’autant plus qu’il y a en Angleterrre deux copies du manuscript dont je puis bien repondre pourvu que vous fassiez usage de le votre’. Rousseau to M. Rey, I7 Nov. I754: letter no. 255, Rousseau (I966) Rousseau: Correspondence Complètes, ed. R. A. Leigh, 52 vols, vol. 3. Geneva: Voltaire Foundation.
37.
Lock (n. I2), p. 8I. Burke (n. 6), vol. I, p. II9. The letter, recovered from a chair lining, is fragmentary.
38.
Warner (n. 28). James H. Warner (1934) ‘A Bibliography of Eighteenth-Century English Editions of J. J. Rousseau’, Political Quarterly13: 225-47. Richard B. Sewall (1937) ‘Rousseau’s First Discourse in England’, PMLA52: 908-II. Sewall (n. 22), pp. 97- 113. Both these authors focus on Rousseau’s contribution to the origins of English romanticism.
39.
Warner (n. 28), p. 478, Warner cites Goldsmith’s and Adam Smith’s reviews (see n. 40). Sewall (n. 22), ‘more generally discussed’, p. I0I.
40.
The Edinburgh Review (I755), pp. I30-4. It is reprinted in Smith (I980) Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith, gen. eds D. D. Raphael and A. S. Skinner, 6 vols, vol. 3, Essays on Philosophical Subjects, p. 242. Oxford: Oxford University Press. The letter proposes that the Review expand its coverage to include the output of France as well as England since intellectual output of ‘France and England are more inquired for among foreign nations than those of any of their [own] academies’ (p. 243). The letter offered a prospectus and overview of the Encyclopédie. For a recent discussion see Dennis C. Rasmussen (2008) The Problems and Promise of Commercial Society: Adam Smith’s Response to Rousseau, pp. 59 - 7I. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press.
41.
The Annual Register (I759), pp. 484-9. E.C. Mossner (1970 [1954]) Life of David Hume, p. 399. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
42.
Burke (n. 8), p. 4.
43.
The use of what I’ve called ‘natural society’ arguments, derived deductively from rationalist premises (which Burke intended to parallel ‘natural religion’) should be distinguished from other, well-established critiques of civilized luxury which drew on classical civic republican ideas - such as inspired Rousseau’s first Discours. These surfaced in John ‘Estimate’ Brown’s Estimate of the manners and principles of the times (I757), which Burke reviewed (reasonably kindly) in the Annual Register. I’m grateful to an anonymous reviewer for suggesting other sources of ‘critics of civilization’ besides Rousseau’s. But these, and indeed Rousseau’s first Discours, can be and were read within this tradition without raising the issues about moral naturalism that the second Discours does.
44.
Rousseau was entertained by Garrick, who was with Burke, a member of the Johnson circle, at Drury Lane. Mossner (n. 4I), pp. 5I7-I9.
45.
Thomas Wellsted Copeland (1942) ‘Edmund Burke and the Book Reviews in Dodsley’s Annual Register’, PMLA57(2) (June): pp. 446-68. Copeland claims that Dodsley’s accounts ‘suggest, if they do not prove, that Burke remained the sole writer of the Register from its first appearance until the year I764’, dating the first known collaborator to I766 (p. 447). He also claims, on the basis of textual and contextual evidence, that the probability is that ‘Burke wrote all the reviews up to and including those in the issue for I765’ (p. 448).
46.
Review of the Lettre à d’Alembert: Annual Register (I759), p. 480.
47.
Annual Register (I762), p. 227.
48.
Letter to the Edinburgh Review, in Smith (n. 40), vol. 3, p. 250.
49.
Bernard Mandeville ( 1988), The Fable of the Bees, ed. F. B. Kaye, 2 vols, vol. 2 , pp. 200, 199. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.
50.
Smith (n. 48), p. 25I.
51.
Smith first published the Theory of the Moral Sentiments in I759, but it was worked up from his lectures on moral philosophy delivered at Glasgow University, I752-8. Adam Smith (I980) Theory of the Moral Sentiments, in Smith (n. 40), vol. I, p. 3.
52.
Conversation recounted in John Rae (I895) Life of Adam Smith, p. 372. London. Cited in Sewall (n. 22), p. 99.
53.
Or silence. ‘Smith writes as if he had little knowledge or appreciation of the carefully argued counter-attacks on Hutcheson in writers such as John Balguy and Richard Price.’ Smith (n. 5I) , intro., p. I2. Smith is scrupulously agnostic on the issue and got his chair. Hume, more outspoken, was denied his.
54.
In his ‘Preface’ Burke stressed the closeness of aesthetics to moral philosophy. Such works as his, he wrote, were ‘not confined to the representation of sensible objects, nor to efforts upon the passions, but extend themselves to the manners, the characters, the actions, and designs of men, their relations, their virtues and vices, they come within the province of judgement, which is improved by attention to and by the habit of reasoning’. Burke (2004) Philosophical Enquiry, ed. David Womersley, pp. 73-4. London: Penguin.
55.
William Dennis to Richard Shackleton, quoted in Samuels (n. 7), p. 2I2 .
56.
In this sense the writer endorses J. C. D. Clark’s view of Burke as subscribing to an essentially unreconstructed Christian deontology, and his view of Burke’s ecclesiological position as much more complex, and, like his views on toleration, responsive to political need. J. C. D. Clark (I985) ‘Burke and the Anglican Defence of the State’, in English Society I688-I832, pp. 247-57. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
57.
Burke (n. 3), p. 240.
58.
Burke (n. 2), p. I3I. The passage was central to Pocock’s seminal article (I982) ‘The Political Economy of Burke’s Analysis of the French Revolution’, Historical Journal 25: pp. 33I-49. See also his (I989) ‘Edmund Burke and the Redefinition of Enthusiasm: The Context as Counter-Revolution’, in Francois Furet and Mona Ozuf (eds) The French Revolution and the Creation of Modern Political Culture, vol. 3, pp. I9-43. Oxford: Oxford University Press. For another important reading of Burke in the context of manners see Richard Bourke (2000) ‘Edmund Burke and Enlightenment Sociability, Justice, Honour, and the Principles of Government’, History of Political Thought 2I(4): 632-56.
59.
Burke (n. 3), p. 242.
60.
The idea of polite manners as a political programme was explored by N. Phillipson and Lawrence Klein. See the latter’s (I994) Shaftesbury and the Culture of Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. See both authors’ contributions to the Proceedings of the Folger Institute Center for the History of British Political Thought (Washington, DC, I993), vol. 5, Politics, Politeness and Patriotism, and their contributions to N. Phillipson and Quentin Skinner (I993) Political Discourse in Early Modern England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. The process by which this programme moved from a subversion of the court political establishment under Shaftesbury to a critique of radicalism under Burke is related in my (2002) ‘From Virtue to Politeness’, in Quentin Skinner and Martin van Gelderen (eds) Republicanism: A Shared European Heritage, vol. I, pp. 85-I05. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
61.
Sympathies explored by an earlier generation of scholars: A.M. Osborn ( 1940) Rousseau and Burke. Oxford: Oxford University Press. David Cameron (1973) The Social Thought of Rousseau and Burke: A Comparative Study. Toronto: Toronto University Press.
62.
J.-J. Rousseau, Discours sur l’origine de l’inegalité , in J.-J. RousseauŒuvres Complètes , vol. 3, p. 156. Paris: Gallimard . Rousseau (1973, in n. 5), p. 75.
63.
Burke (n. 2), p. I38.
64.
Burke (n. I0), p. 8I.
65.
For one of the more elaborate amongst many such claims, ibid. pp. 78-9: Duties are not voluntary. . . much the strongest moral obligations are such as were never the results of our option. I allow, that ig no supreme ruler exists, wise to form, and potent to enforce, the moral law, there is no sanction . . . against the will of prevalent power. . . . the awful Author of our being is the Author of our place in the order of existence; and . . . having disposed and marshalled us . . . has, in and by that disposition, virtually subjected us to act the part which belongs to the place assigned to us We have obligations to mankind at large, which are not in consequence of any special voluntary pact, They arise from the relation of man to man and the relation of man to God, which are not relations of choice.
66.
Burke (n. 2), p. I44.
67.
Part of the revolutionary strategy exposed by Pocock (I982, in n. 58).
68.
Burke (I989) Letter to a Member of the National Assembly, in Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, gen. ed. Paul Langford, vol. 8, p. 3I7. Oxford: Oxford University Press. The Letter had been composed in response to a request from a moderate deputy from Mirecourt, Francoise-Louis-Thibault de Menonville. Burke left to Menonville whether to publish it or not, which he did (Paris, April I79I), and an English edition appeared on 2I May.
69.
Ibid. p. 3I3.
70.
Ibid. p. 3I4.
71.
Ibid. p. 3I3.
72.
Burke (n. 6), vol. 6, p. 270. The letter was translated and published by Rivarol: (I79I) Lettre de M. Burke, sur les affaires de France et des pays Bas . . . Paris.
73.
Burke (n. 2), p. 2I9.
74.
Burke (n. 68), p. 3I2.
75.
Ibid. p. 3I4.
76.
Letter to William Elliot (26 May I795), in Burke (1991) Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, gen. ed. Paul Langford, vol. 9, p. 37. Oxford: Oxford University Press .
77.
One of best discussions of Burke’s attitude to Rousseau brings out well the theme of isolation in Rousseau and the role it may have played in dissociating the revolutionary character from the normal sources of sociability. Seamus Deane (I968) ‘Burke and the French Philosophes’, Studies in Burke and his Time I0: II25 ff. A much shorter but related discussion occurs in his (I988) The French Revolution and Enlightenment in England, I789-I832, pp. 5 ff. Cambridge. MA: Harvard University Press.
