Burke and Hegel 1 77his constituents, “Your representative owes you, not his industry
only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if
he sacrifices it to your opinion.” As a matter of principle, he
supported the modification of penal laws against Irish Catholics.
In anti-Catholic Bristol that, among other issues, caused his
defeat in the election of 1780. He was given a safe seat, however,
and continued in Parliament.
Burke lived during two of the three most important revolu
tions in human history. His position regarding the American
Revolution and the French Revolution should provide further
insight into his “realistic” philosophy. Burke fought in Parlia
ment against the policies of George III, and gave speech after
speech in defense of the position of the colonists against the
King. His speech On Moving Resolutions For Conciliation with
America put forward six points which probably most compre
hensively states the colonists’ arguments. He did not appeal on
behalf of the colonists’ natural rights. Rather he spoke of the
rights of Englishmen, to which the colonists were entitled. For
Conciliation used to be required reading in American high
schools where student learned how Burke made America’s case
to the king. “The question is not whether you have a right to
render your people miserable, but whether it is not in your
interest to make them happy. It is not what a lawyer tells me I
may do, but what humanity, reason and justice tell me I ought to
do.” He then asks the king if he refuses to relax his demands just
because “your magazines (are) stuffed with arms to enforce
them.”
The colonists were simply defending their rights which had
evolved over the centuries, from Magna Carta, to the English
Bill of Rights, to the period in which their own institutions had
matured into a stable, practical, and natural system of govern
ment. Burke believed that all revolutions were bad. They upset
the natural evolution that was so important to him and his view
of society. In a sense, Burke maintained that the American
Revolution, like the Glorious Revolution, was “a revolution
prevented, not made.” Actually, George III was the revolution
ary, attempting to return the monarchy to conform to some
abstract concept of divine right. To an extent, history proved
Burke right. After the War for American Independence, little of
the existing institutions had changed. In a very real, practical