ABSTRACT
Edmund Burke, committed to reforming government, became an outspoken political conservative when confronted by the French Revolution. Burke's most memorable activity, however, occurred in response to the French Revolution. He had proven himself a sincere advocate of reform throughout his career, but in 1790, just a year after revolutionaries overthrew the monarchy of Louis XVI. Educated during the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, Burke had taken an early interest in the efforts of contemporary philosophers to apply natural reason instead of religion to questions about human civilization. Conservatives during the nineteenth century used the principle of prescription (the assignment of rights and titles according to historical custom) in an effort to prevent the erosion of traditional institutions such as the monarchy and the nobility. Finally, the moral pessimism of Burke's political philosophy, expressed in prescient claims that the French Revolution would ultimately degenerate into savagery and tyranny.
