ALL this, in effect, I think, but am not sure, I have said elsewhere. It cannot at this time be too often repeated; line upon line; precept upon precept; until it comes into the currency of a proverb, to innovate is not to reform. The French revolutionists complained of everything; they refused to reform anything; and they left nothing, no, nothing at all unchanged. The consequences are before us, — not in remote history; not in future prognostication: they are about us; they are upon us.
They shake the public security; they menace private enjoyment.* They dwarf the growth of the young; they break the quiet of the old. If we travel, they stop our way. They infest us in town; they pursue us to the country. Our business is interrupted; our repose is troubled; our pleasures are saddened; our very studies are poisoned and perverted, and knowledge is rendered worse than ignorance, by the enormous evils of this dreadful innovation.
* In 1793 members of the French National Convention, exhilarated by the assassination of Louis XVI and convinced of their moral superiority, had declared war on Great Britain, and were now eagerly spreading war through the Low Countries, Italy, Spain and Portugal as a progressivist crusade. European colonial policy was affected as far away as India, and at home the British Government was panicked into a clumsy clamp-down on pro-French sympathy. Travel and trade became increasingly difficult, fear and suspicion grew and many friendships were badly strained. It particularly hurt Burke because he was quite the Francophile. See The Cradle of Our Race.