Burke writes: “The share of infamy that is likely to fall to the lot of each individual in public acts” is inversely related to number of people who exercise power.(82) However, the problem is not only one of numbers. With his association of democracy with an inherent tendency toward “oligarchy,” Burke advances a particular criticism: that democracies in modern times would, ultimately, surrender political power to “new monied interest.”(96)īurke’s first targets are the masses and the “political men of the letters.”(97) He starts with reiterating one of the oldest criticisms against democracies – that democracy is the rule of the “swinish multitude.”(69) By disseminating political power to everyone, democracy diminishes the force of feelings and mores that serve as checks on the abuse of political power.
How to reconcile these two claims? How does the rule of the masses turn into the rule of the wealthy? This perplexing picture is precisely what Burke aims to present. Of this I am certain, that in a democracy the majority of citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority whenever strong divisions prevail in that kind of polity.”(109-10) Thus, Burke presents the revolutionary government as, on the one hand, an oligarchy pretending to be a democracy, and, on the other hand, a true democracy, in which the masses exercise tyranny through “popular persecution.”(110) “If I recollect rightly, Aristotle observes that a democracy has many striking points of resemblance with a tyranny. Yet, he immediately goes on to say that democracy is emerging in France, and it is quickly on its way to degenerating into a tyrannical government of the masses. “I do not know under what description to class the present ruling authority in France… It affects to be a pure democracy, though I think it is in a direct train of becoming shortly a mischievous and ignoble oligarchy.”(109) Burke here seems to suggest that democracy is a cover for an oligarchic class rule in France. Why, then, did Burke identify the French Revolution as a democratic revolution? At first, Burke seems to claim that the revolutionary government is democratic only in facade. They did not call themselves “democrats,” using instead other terms such as “patriots,” “nationals,” and “republicans.” It was not until Robespierre’s speech in 1794 that the Revolutionary government declared itself to be a “republican or democratic government” in some official form, but even in this case Robespierre used democracy not to refer to people’s direct involvement in self-government but to the election of representatives. By the time the Reflections was published, Revolutionaries had abolished aristocratic privileges, but constitutional monarchy was still a likely option.
Historians of the French Revolution and democracy might object to Burke’s portrayal of the Revolution as a democratic revolution.
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