From the French Revolution to the Glorious Revolution—Edmund Burke’s Interpretation of the 1688 Revolution
Date Issued
2014
Date
2014
Author(s)
Hsu, I-Han
Abstract
The Glorious Revolution in 1688 established the British constitutional monarchy, and paved the way for the Whig Supremacy in the early 18th century. A hundred years later, when the French Revolution erupted in 1789, many British radicals linked the French Revolution to the Revolution of 1688, encouraging Britain people to support French one. Yet Edmund Burke, the famous Whig parliamentarian, was against French Revolution. He committed to elaborate the difference between Glorious Revolution and French Revolution in his works and speeches. One of them particularly interesting was An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs. In this pamphlet, Burke cited a political trial concerning the nature of 1688 revolution and the right of resistance, which happened in 1710, to prove that his own arguments coincided with the early Whigs’. He hoped it could persuade his Whig fellows to give up on the “New Whigs” represented by Paine and embraced the “Old Whigs” creed instead. About Burke’s dichotomy of “New Whigs” and “Old Whigs”, historians have known that it was Burke’s invention and not identical to the older meanings of similar terms. As for how could Whigs’ testimony in the Sacheverell Trial of 1710 be used to support Burke’s counter-revolutionary statements, scholars like J. P. Kenyon and Pocock had suggested it was because the Whigs in 1710 had become conservative. This thesis examined Burke’s interpretation of 1688, and introduced Sacheverell Trial’s background, process, and outcome. Then it analyzes Burke’s uses of this trial. For Burke, the main difference between “New” and “Old” Whigs were about the right of resistance, the ancient constitution and social contract. On the right of resistance, Burke or “Old Whigs” were not very different to Locke, all argued that resistance was only just when the ruler illegally harmed the ruled. About contract theory, traditional Whigs tended to mix it with the ancient constitution, believed the later was the representative of the former. The ancient constitution and the ideal of balanced polity composed of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, were discourses common to both Court and Country party at least until French Revolution. Overall, Burke’s interpretation of 1688 belonged to the mainstream Whig context.
Subjects
柏克
光榮革命
輝格派
抵抗權
古憲法
社會契約
Type
thesis
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