ABSTRACT
Edmund Burke, who was followed by Hippolyte Tame, criticized those who sat in the Constituent Assembly for disrupting French society in order to apply abstract principles divorced from reality. Whether the principles of 1789 embody universal values is not at issue here, but they released new energy and moulded a society which endured. And if the Assembly’s members had read the philosophes, their educations neither obstructed nor weakened their grasp of events. Threatened with counter-revolution and outdistanced by the people, dealing cautiously with parish priests and Patriot nobles, with economic interests and especially with the colonials, the deputies never ceased to take account of circumstances. Indeed, it was for reflecting circumstances too closely that parts of their work were to prove ephemeral.
