burke_reflections.txt

=============================================================
               sentence analysis 
                       of 
     Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France
=============================================================

[1]

============================================

You are pleased to call again,
    and with some earnestness,
for my thoughts on the late proceedings in France.

I will not give you reason to imagine,
    that I think my sentiments of such value as to wish myself to be solicited
    about them.

They are of too little consequence to be very anxiously either communicated or
with held.

It was from attention to you,
    and to you only,
that I hesitated at the time,
    when you first desired to receive them.

In the first letter 
    I had the honour to write to you,
    and which at length I sent,
I wrote neither for nor from any description of men;
nor shall I in this.

My errors,
    if any,
are my own.

My reputation alone is to answer for them.

============================================

You see, Sir,
    by the long letter
        I have transmitted to you,
that,
        though I do most heartily wish 
            that France may be animated by a spirit of rational liberty,
        and that I think you bound,
            in all honest policy,
        to provide a permanent body,
            in which that spirit may reside,
        and an effectual organ,
            by which it may act,
    it is my misfortune to entertain great doubts 
        concerning several material points in your late transactions.

============================================

You imagined,
    when you wrote last,
that I might possibly be reckoned among the approvers of certain proceedings in
France,
    from the solemn public seal of sanction 
        they have received from two clubs of gentlement in London,
            called the Constitutional Society, and the Revolution Society.

============================================

I certainly have the honour to belong to more clubs than one,
    in which the constitution of this kingdom, and the principles of the
    glorious revolution, are held in high reverence;
and I reckon myself among the most forward in my zeal for maintaining that
constitution and those principles in their utmost purity and vigour.

It is because I do so, that I think it necessary for me, that there should be no
mistake.

Those
    who cultivate the memory of our revolution,
and those
    who are attached to the Constitution of this kingdom,
will take good care
    how they are involved with persons
        who,
            under the pretext of zeal towards the Revolution and Constitution,
        too frequently wander from their true principles, 
        and are ready on every occasion to depart from the firm, but cautions
        and deliberate, spirit 
            which produced the one
            and which presides in the other.

    Before I proceed to answer the more material particulars in your letter,
I shall beg leave to give you such information 
    as I have been able to obtain of the two clubs
        which have thought proper,
            as bodies,
        to interfere in the concerns in France, 
--- first assuring you 
        that I am not,
        and that I have never been,
            a member of either of those societies.


============================================

The first,
    calling itself the Constitutional Society, or Society for Constitutional
    Information, or by some such title,
is,
    I believe,
of seven or eight years' standing.

The institution of this society appears to be of a charitable, and so far of a
laudable nature:
it was intended for the circulation,
    at the expense of its members,
of many books
    which few others would be at the expense of buying,
    and which might lie on the hands of the booksellers, 
        to the great loss of an useful body of men.

Whether the books so charitably circulated were ever as charitably read is more
than I know.

Possibly several of them have been exported to France,
and,
    like goods not in request here,
may with you have found a market.

I have heard much talk of the lights to be drawn from books
   that are sent from hence.

What improvements 
    they have had in this passage 
    (as it is said
        some liquors are meliorated by crossing the sea)
I cannot tell;
but I never heard a man of common judgment or the least degree of information
speak a word in praise of the greater part of the publications circulated by the
society;
nor have their proceedings been accounted,
    except by some of themselves,
as of any serious consequence.

===================================

Your National Assembly seems to entertain much the same opinion
    that I do of this poor charitable club.

    As a nation,
you reserved the whole stock of your eloquent acknowlegements for the Revolution
Society,
    when their fellows in the Constitutional were in equity entitled for some
    share.
    
    Since you have selected the Revolution Society as the great object of your
    national thanks and praises,
you will think me excusable in making its late conduct of my observations.

The National Assembly of France has given importance to these gentlemen by
adopting them;
and they return the favor by acting as a committee in England for extending the
principles of the National Assembly.

Henceforward we must consider them as a kind of privileged persons, 
    as no inconsiderable members in the diplomatic body.

The is one among the revolutions
    which have given splendor to obscurity and distinction to undiscerned merit.

Until very lately I do not recollect to have heard of this club.

I am quite sure 
    that it never occupied a moment of my thoughts,
    --- nor,
            I believe,
        those of any person out of their own set.

I find,
    upon inquiry,
that,
    on the anniversary of the Revolution in 1688,
a club of Dissenters,
    but of what denomination I know not,
have long had the custom of hearing a sermon in one of their churches,
and that afterwards they spent the day cheerfully,
    as other clubs do,
at the tavern.

But I never heard
    that any public measure or political system,
        much less that the merits of the constitution of any foreign nation,
    had been the subject of a formal proceeding at their festivals,
until,
    to my inexpressible surprise,
I found them 
    in a sort of public capacity,
    by a congratulatory address,
giving an authorative sanction to the proceedings of the National Assembly in
France.