Edmund Burke, the French Revolution and the Battle for the Soul of the Whig Party*

Abstract

AbstractEdmund Burke split dramatically with Charles James Fox and his Whig connection after the outbreak of the French Revolution. In his Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs (1791), Burke contended that he had not abandoned his party's principles and that it was the Foxite Whigs who had morphed into a new party. The article demonstrates that while Burke believed that the French Revolution rendered old party battles irrelevant to an extent, he did not lose his confidence in the creed of his party as he understood it, nor in the idea of party as such, as the remaining years of his life demonstrate. Key members of the party stayed attached to the doctrine of party loyalty Burke had formulated, which meant that he was for some years a lone voice of dissent within the Whig camp. Eventually, however, many of the ‘Old Whigs’ became convinced of Burke's interpretation of events in France and their threat to Britain, and joined William Pitt the Younger in a coalition government in 1794, leaving Fox and a small rump in opposition. Several Whigs and Liberals in the 19th century rehabilitated Burke's reputation, but they regretted his split with Fox and many believed that he had become insane in the 1790s. However, this article concludes by suggesting that the position he took on the French Revolution in opposition to Fox and the Foxites may have helped rather than hindered the survival of Burkean Whiggism in the first decades of the 19th century.