ABSTRACT
Enormous, in our eyes incredible, social injustices have been gradually remedied in the nearly two centuries since the French Revolution, although others remain or have newly appeared. Perhaps the good that has been achieved is a legacy of the revolution, and perhaps it is not. The French Revolution was the first of the totalitarian movements that have drenched the Western world in blood, particularly in our own century. This is what Burke prophetically saw and this is what he hated. Revolutionary principles were all one, all equal, all good. For the flaws of English government were also gross. Arbitrary power in the people was no more tolerable than in kings or colonial proconsuls. A representative, electorally responsible institution was critical, therefore, not merely as a sharer of power, but as a generator of consent. Safeguards against arbitrary power, resistance to total power, assurance of stable government which is responsive and capable of generating long-term consent, these are agnostic objectives.
