3. O’Brien, Great Melody (21 Feb)
Shunning understandings of Burke as the father of conservatism or primarily an exponent of natural law, O’Brien contends the guiding theme of the Anglo-Irishman’s political career is opposing tyranny and the abuse of power:
American colonies, Ireland, France, and India
Harried, and Burke’s great melody against it
– WB Yeats, the Sevens Sages
He agrees Burke changed his stance but not his ground: ‘One should distinguish between inconstancy and variation under circumstance. Liberty must work in conjunction with order’, Burke says in a detailed statement of political views (p. 441). Whenever there is an ‘obvious’ silence it’s traceable to his Irish liabilities; identification with Catholics emerges only very late, in the published letter to Hercules Langrishe.
Whiggish views of the late Georgian era remain prevalent, even if the methodology is suspect. Burke’s role in British and international politics was more significant than usually held, notably his analysis of George III’s court being more accurate than Namierites allow. Indeed, he ‘founded’ the Whig school of history with Thoughts on Present Discontents; O’Brien’s view is consistent with Mansfield’s finding that Burke established political parties. Namier saw Burke as the lead representative of the Whig tradition, which is better represented by Macaulay, Morley, and Trevelyan. Morley thought no one surpassed Burke in bringing philosophy to bear on statesmanship, ironic given his reputation for hysteria, and Namier’s mistake is believing the historian who sees the most recent / the latest has the best perspective: this may be so but does not entail authority to refute contemporary statements and records. To find Burke guilty of authoritarianism, as does Namier, one must ignore everything he ever said.
O’Brien treats Burke thematically, rather than chronologically.
: Grattan represented the Protestant Ascendancy, Burke surreptitiously the underground Catholic gentry, displaying lifelong interest in its culture. ‘Will no one stop this madman Grattan?’ (p. 243) – Burke was alarmed by independence for the Ascendancy, the Volunteers seeming to Catholics to represent mob violence. His father’s conversion was a wound that never healed; to his mother he owed a debt of honor that was never expatiated. He accepted Rome as a legitimate Christian institution, and closely identified with Trinity College Dublin. The Ascendancy correctly perceived Burke as a threat but couldn’t produce a smoking gun to alienate British Whigs. He shaped the Catholic Relief Bill of 1778, though did not advocate it; he lost Bristol because of evident sympathies which characterized every other important field of pursuit.
: conciliation meant extending liberty throughout the empire. Once the fighting broke out, he fully sided with the colonists. As with the other three themes, the enemy is abuse of power. He likely drove the Rockingham administration’s repeal of the Stamp Act. Burke was concerned with American affairs by 1767, contra Namier, but the fragile alliance between Rockingham and Grenville (whom Burke disliked) effectively silenced him; when Grenville died in 1770, Burke (the driving force behind repeal of the Stamp Act) was no longer hostage to its author. Subsequently Fox was won over to the Rockinghams by Burke, who was prepared to follow him in the Commons. His major pronouncements on the Colonies comprise speeches on the Declaratory Act (1766), American taxation (1774), Conciliation with America (1775), and the address to the sheriffs of Bristol (1777). Those who were most anti-Catholic in Ireland and America were also most opposed to George III’s America policy, paradoxically for Burke. Further, Irish Volunteers were pro-American but anti-French, a problem once France swung behind the colonists. Burke spoke to English Whig towns, but not to the Ascendancy since he was a closet Jacobite. The Irish ferment around free trade in 1779 demonstrated the gulf between Grattan, unconcerned with Catholics, and Burke. Between Saratoga and Yorktown, Westminster’s struggles were essentially George III versus Burke, via the struggle for economic reform and the push for a second Rockingham ministry. In the course of negotiating the possibility of a North-Rockingham coalition, George III saw Burke a real advantage, ergo Burke didn’t need to prove his bona fides; from 1782 (Yorktown), George moves toward the character of a Whiggish constitutional monarch (contra Roberts).
: In 1773 Burke turned down an opportunity to lead an inquiry into general amnesty for the East India Company – to whitewash, which would have produced personal benefits. However, he soon after gave a speech seeming to absolve Hastings and others in furtherance of the Rockingham line. He could not yet set the party’s tone. His real interests emerge in 1781, his fury demonstrating the injury of prior restraint. O’Brien allows for some defense of Hastings’ administration, while concluding Burke’s opposition to be principled. In supporting Fox’s India bill, Burke reveals his mind: ‘obloquy is a necessary ingredient in the composition of all true glory’; ‘It is by bribing, not so often being bribed, that wicked politicians bring ruin on mankind’ (p. 348). George III ultimately saw the validity of Burke’s view; Pitt trapped the Foxite Whigs of public identification w opposition to East India, Burke didn’t care. Cornwallis, succeeding Hastings, concluded the project Burke commenced in 1781.
: Price’s Revolutionary Society, established to celebrate 1688, emphasized the anti-Catholic aspects of the Revolution. Price was further an acolyte of Lord Shelburne, whom Burke thought had fomented the Gordon riots. Fox precipitated and insisted on the Whigs’ public split over France; Burke was trying not to run too far ahead of Portland and Fitzwilliam. When Pitt coopted the latter, Burke became superfluous. Burke understood fear of Jacobinism spreading to Ireland was paradoxically helpful to Catholic emancipation. Pitt calculated he would continue to support the government despite Fitzwilliams’ recall from Dublin, to have no choice but to support continued repression.
The French Revolution and Russian Revolution preceded Hitler in recasting society on the basis of theory. The exact nature of ideas is unimportant – the possibility of the mob seizing power is the essence; victims of the Terror were victims of rationalism. In an appendix of correspondence with the author, Irving Berlin is wrong to suggest Burke attacked the Enlightenment, or was reactionary (in Crooked Timber). Opposing the French Revolution as utopiam is far from reactionary, which Berlin concedes in correspondence. Nor was Burke a theoretical advocate of aristocracy, but more a defending of actually existing society.
NB: ‘Too much immersion in one’s profession, not enough in learning, relegates concentration to forms of business – not substance – because forms deal with ordinary matters’.
‘I cannot go that way to work. I feel an insuperable reluctance in giving my hand to destroy any established institution of government, upon a theory, however plausible it may be’. (p. 321
‘Men must have a certain fund of natural moderation to qualify them for freedom, else it becomes noxious to themselves and a perfect nuisance to everybody else’. (p. 387)
‘To innovate is not to reform’ (p.537)