Western Civilization II / Unit 10 WC2 0933 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Reading Burke's Reflections
The idea
The exam quotes Burke and asks whose viewpoint the passage represents or what it argues. The Reflections of seventeen ninety make one argument in several forms: liberties are an inheritance, not an abstraction, and a people that forgets its ancestors will not think of its posterity.
In practice
Read it in three moves. First, the inheritance: from Magna Carta to the Declaration of Right, he says, England has claimed its liberties as an entailed inheritance from its forefathers, to be transmitted to posterity, an estate belonging to the people of this kingdom. Second, the contrast: the framers of the Petition of Right claimed their franchises not as the rights of men, on abstract principles, but as the rights of Englishmen, a patrimony. Third, the temperament: following nature is wisdom without reflection and above it, a spirit of innovation is generally the result of a selfish temper and confined views, and people will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors. The anchor adds his arithmetic: twenty-four millions ought not to prevail over two hundred thousand if a constitution were a sum.
Where people slip
The distractors are Paine, who answered him with the rights of man, and Wollstonecraft, whom the witness pairs against him. A passage that calls liberty an inheritance and innovation selfish is Burke; one that calls rights universal is his opponent.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
Unlocks
- Nothing yet depends on this.
Something wrong in this lesson? Flag it