Introduction

When the French Revolution broke out in 1789, many in England hailed it, believing the French were following the path of the Glorious Revolution. The next year Burke wrote this book, in the form of a long letter to a young French gentleman, predicting that the Revolution would end in disorder, tyranny and military dictatorship, predictions fulfilled within a few years in the Terror and in Napoleon. Society, he argues, is 'a partnership between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born'; tradition, custom and religion hold the accumulated wisdom of the generations, far superior to any scheme an individual can devise by abstract reason, and reform should be like repairing an old building, not pulling it down to start again. His passage on Queen Marie Antoinette is especially famous: 'the age of chivalry is gone.' The book is the founding work of conservatism.