Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France

1790

The Irish-born Whig, once friend of American independence, now wrote a hot-blooded attack on the Paris Revolution: it had burned tradition and mathematics-lovers would hand it to a soldier on horseback. Paine answered with Rights of Man. Modern conservatism and modern liberalism began arguing in the same season. Burke's prediction of military dictatorship, dismissed by radicals at the time, proved uncannily accurate within a decade.