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 Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow The following, from a lady whose literary and political character is justly esteemed, accompanied a copy of this work for the Press. - Observations on the Reflections of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke, on the Revolution in France

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The following, from a lady whose literary and political character is justly esteemed, accompanied a copy of this work for the Press. - Catharine Macaulay, Observations on the Reflections of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke, on the Revolution in France [1790]

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Observations on the Reflections of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke, on the Revolution in France, in a Letter to the Right Hon. the Earl of Stanhope (London: C. Dilly, 1790).

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  • The Following, From a Lady Whose Literary and Political Character Is Justly Esteemed, Accompanied a Copy of This Work For the Press.
  • Observations, &c.

The following, from a lady whose literary and political character is justly esteemed, accompanied a copy of this work for the Press.

Messieurs Thomas and Andrews,

PRIESTLEY, Paine, and other observers on Mr. Burke’s celebrated Philippick, have been read with avidity in America, while a pamphlet of equal merit has escaped the publick eye. It has happened to fall into very few hands on this side the Atlantick, therefore a republication will doubtless gratify every American, who has not lost sight of those principles that actuated, and the perseverance that effected, the independence of America.

The celebrity of the author precludes the necessity of an introduction to any of her works, and the truths contained in her observations might be their best recommendation, even though she had thought proper to prefix her name.

A people who have recently and severely struggled for the security of their rights, cannot be inattentive to the arguments that support them, however some, from the versability of the human character, and the instability of man, may be ready to relinquish them.

Whatever convulsions may yet be occasioned by the revolution in France, it will doubtless be favourable to general liberty, and Mr. Burke may undesignedly be an instrument of its promotion, by agitating questions which have for a time lain dormant in England, and have been almost forgotten, or artfully disguised, in America.

You will doubtless be pleased, without further comment from your correspondent, with an opportunity of republishing the observations of a lady in England, who has added in a letter to her friend, that “the French Revolution was very unpopular in England; that it is disliked by government, because it would necessarily check the encroachments of arbitrary power; by the nobility and clergy, from motives of interest; and by the great body of the people, because the National Assembly, in their reform, had not made the British Constitution the model of their own.”