Reflections On The Revolution In France

“Abstractedly speaking, government, as well as liberty, is good; […] Am I to congratulate an highwayman and murderer, who has broke prison, upon the recovery of his natural rights? This would be to act over again the scene of the criminals condemned to the gallies, and their heroic deliverer, the metaphysic Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance.” 

Burke poses this question at the start of Reflections on the Revolution in France, when he responds to Reverend Price’s admiration of the National Assembly’s triumphant attainment of liberties during the French Revolution. Burke expresses skepticism over Price’s congratulations, coming on the heels of the storming of the Bastille, France’s notorious prison. To this end, Burke questions what perimeters define the term ‘liberty’; in this case, he alludes to the delusional hero of Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote, who saves prisoners from a just fate. Burke similarly questions whether or not he should extend the same fixed liberties to all men, even criminals.

“The wild gas, the fixed air, is plainly broke loose: but we ought to suspend our judgement until the first effervescence is a little subsided, until the liquor is cleared, and until we see something deeper than the agitation of a troubled and frothy surface.” 

Natural gas is an unpredictable entity; once let loose, it can become flammable. This draws an analogy between gas and radical ideas, which have the same flammable quality when fanned by a group of people. Burke urges prudence; he says to wait until something more substantial than the unpredictable gas emerges. In much the same way, a thinker of any influence (like Price or members of the Revolutionary Society) must consider their idea and its ramifications carefully before preaching it to an open, amenable audience.