Introduction
In 1789, the leaders of the French Revolution promised liberty, equality and fraternity to the downtrodden people of France, and Francis Russell (1765-1802), 5th Duke of Bedford, admired them for it. But Edmund Burke warned him that to France’s new elite, righting the wrongs of the poor was infinitely less exciting than the chance to conduct a relentless socio-economic experiment on the peoples of Europe.
THERE is a manifest, marked distinction, which ill men with ill designs, or weak men incapable of any design, will constantly be confounding, that is, a marked distinction between change and reformation.
The former alters the substance of the objects themselves; and gets rid of all their essential good, as well as of all the accidental evil, annexed to them. Change is novelty; and whether it is to operate any one of the effects of reformation at all, or whether it may not contradict the very principle upon which reformation is desired, cannot be certainly known beforehand.
Reform is, not a change in the substance, or in the primary modification, of the object, but, a direct application of a remedy to the grievance complained of. So far as that is removed, all is sure. It stops there; and, if it fails, the substance which underwent the operation, at the very worst, is but where it was.*
* Burke did not think the French monarchy needed no reform. “I am no stranger to the faults and defects of the subverted government of France” he wrote; “[...] there was no question but that abuses existed, and that they demanded a reform.” But the French public had been bounced into a project which went much further than they anticipated. “Men have been sometimes led by degrees,” he reminds us, “sometimes hurried, into things of which, if they could have seen the whole together, they never would have permitted the most remote approach.” It was, in fact, a situation very similar to that in Russia in 1917.
Précis
In 1796, Edmund Burke was stung into writing to the Duke of Bedford about the recent revolution in France. He made a sharp distinction between Reform, which focuses on some specific grievance and at worst does no harm, and Change, which is a reckless fumbling about in the dark of abstract theory and has far-reaching consequences none can foresee. (59 / 60 words)
In 1796, Edmund Burke was stung into writing to the Duke of Bedford about the recent revolution in France. He made a sharp distinction between Reform, which focuses on some specific grievance and at worst does no harm, and Change, which is a reckless fumbling about in the dark of abstract theory and has far-reaching consequences none can foresee.
Variations: 1.increase the length of this precis to exactly 65 words. 2.reduce the length of this precis to exactly 55 words. 3.introduce one of the following words into the precis: although, besides, not, or, otherwise, ought, since, whether.
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