Wait and See, by Edmund Burke

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The wild gas, the fixed air,* is plainly broke loose: but we ought to suspend our judgment until the first effervescence is a little subsided, till the liquor is cleared, and until we see something deeper than the agitation of a troubled and frothy surface. I must be tolerably sure, before I venture publicly to congratulate men upon a blessing, that they have really received one. Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver; and adulation is not of more service to the people than to kings.

I should therefore suspend my congratulations on the new liberty of France, until I was informed how it had been combined with government; with public force; with the discipline and obedience of armies; with the collection of an effective and well-distributed revenue; with morality and religion; with the solidity of property; with peace and order; with civil and social manners. All these (in their way) are good things too; and, without them, liberty is not a benefit whilst it lasts, and is not likely to continue long.* The effect of liberty to individuals is, that they may do what they please: we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations, which may be soon turned into complaints.

by Edmund Burke 1729-1797

From ‘Reflections on the Revolution in France’ (1790) as reprinted for the Harvard Classics series edited by Charles William Eliot (1834-1926).

* ‘Wild gas’ (spiritus sylvestris) and ‘fixed air’ are both early names for what was later (1867) called carbon dioxide. The first name was coined by Flemish chemist Jan Baptist van Helmont (1580-1644) in the 1630s. The second was coined by Scottish chemist Joseph Black (1728-1799) in the 1750s, on the grounds that it appeared to be fixed (rather than free to come and go) in certain substances, such as limestone, from which it could be liberated by heat or acids. In 1774, Joseph Priestley (1733-1804) described his experiments with artificially carbonated water and wine, which produced a fizzy drink with a ‘delicate and agreeable flavour’ and, in his opinion, significant health benefits.

* Burke explained this further a year on, in A Letter to a Member of the National Assembly (1791): see There is No Liberty without Self-Control.

Précis

The French Revolution, said Burke, was rather like a seething pot, all froth and fizz. It was necessary to wait until the action had died down, and then to analyse the whole dish. When liberty overpowers other essential ingredients in a civilised society, such as security, manners and morality, it is not a matter for celebration.

Questions for Critics

1. What is the author aiming to achieve in writing this?

2. Note any words, devices or turns of phrase that strike you. How do they help the author communicate his ideas more effectively?

3. What impression does this passage make on you? How might you put that impression into words?

Based on The English Critic (1939) by NL Clay, drawing on The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910, by J. E. Spingarn, Professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University, USA.

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