Reflections on the Revolution in France by an English-Irish politician Edmund Burke is a philosophico-political treatise that widely criticizes the revolutionary method programms for rebuilding the society. It was written in the middle of the French Revolution in 1790.
The treatise caused a wide social discussion, in particular because of the parallel oratorical activity of Burke in the Parlainment and as a bright expression of the ideology of conservatism.
In his work Burke criticized sharply and categorically the French Revolution as an attempt to destroy the entrenched social order and change it into a theoretic, and that is why inviable, scheme of social relations, which was developed by encyclopedic philosophers.
AND ON THE PROCEEDINGS IN CERTAIN SOCIETIES IN LONDON RELATIVE TO THAT EVENT:
IN A LETTER INTENDED TO HAVE BEEN SENT TO A GENTLEMAN IN PARIS.
1790.
It may not be unnecessary to inform the reader that the following Reflections had their origin in a correspondence between the author and a very young gentleman at Paris, who did him the honor of desiring his opinion upon the important transactions which then, and ever since have, so much occupied the attention of all men. An answer was written some time in the month of October, 1789; but it was kept back upon prudential considerations. That letter is alluded to in the beginning of the following sheets. It has been since forwarded to the person to whom it was addressed. The reasons for the delay in sending it were assigned in a short letter to the same gentleman. This produced on his part a new and pressing application for the author's sentiments.
The author began a second and more full discussion on the subject. This he had some thoughts of publishing early in the last spring; but the matter gaining upon him, he found that what he had undertaken not only far exceeded the measure of a letter, but that its importance required rather a more detailed consideration than at that time he had any leisure to bestow upon it. However, having thrown down his first thoughts in the form of a letter, and, indeed, when he sat down to write, having intended it for a private letter, he found it difficult to change the form of address, when his sentiments had grown into a greater extent and had received another direction. A different plan, he is sensible, might be more favorable to a commodious division and distribution of his matter.