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Edmund Burke

2 bytes removed, 08:03, October 12, 2020
/* French Revolution */ moved comma so not a sentence splice
Burke supported military intervention against the [[French Revolution]] and for tighter controls of civil Liberties in Britain, so as to prevent such an occurrence happening there. Rejecting [[Jean Jacques Rousseau]] (1712–78) and the philosophies, Burke said the popular will does not really exist, but that the ancient constitution did, and it should be upheld.
His great book ''Reflections On the Revolution in France'' (1790) was ignored at the time , but in the long run helped reduce revolutionary sentiments among British thinkers, and had a significant impact on Italian and French conservatives.
The book, for example, has ten pages on the monasteries of France that deplores not only the confiscation of their property but also the destruction of the institutions themselves, which are defended for their contribution to learning, beauty, and agriculture and for their general social role. Their "superstition" is vindicated as preferable to that of the radical philosophies. Burke maintains that they could and should have been reformed rather than suppressed.<ref>Derek Beales, "Edmund Burke and the Monasteries of France." ''Historical Journal'' 2005 48(2): 415-436. Issn: 0018-246x</ref>
By contrast with the French fiasco, he praised the Glorious Revolution of 1688 in Britain, saying, "The Revolution was made to preserve our ancient indisputable laws and liberties, and that ancient constitution of government which is our only security for law and liberty." The English were not creating a new regime, merely restoring the old one that had been distorted by the Catholic James II.<ref>J.G.A. Pocock, "Burke and the Ancient Constitution", ''Historical Journal,'' 3 (1960), 125-43</ref>
==Role of religion==
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