Edmund Burke and the limits of pragmatism

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Art by Elliot Skow

When the American colonies rebelled, but before they declared their independence, Edmund Burke argued, in Parliament, for conceding: stop trying to impose on them taxes that they thought unjust, and allow them to govern themselves. All this in order to keep the colonies, in some thin respect, still under the rule of the British crown.

But didn’t Parliament have the authority and the right to tax the colonies? Wasn’t that the question to settle first? No; that question, Burke thought, was irrelevant: “we must govern America according to [its true nature]...and not according to our own imaginations; not according to abstract ideas of right.” Britain, he thought, should yield; but “whether we yield as a matter of right” was a question he set aside.

So what was this “true nature” of the Americans? In that people, Burke thought, “a love of freedom is the predominating feature.” This spirit of liberty, when it met “unhappily...with an exercise of power in England,” is what “kindled this flame,” a flame that would soon burst into war: only weeks remained until the Battle of Lexington and Concord. Burke said that England’s “exercise of power,” while not “reconcilable to any ideas of liberty,” was nevertheless “lawful.” So wait—Burke did think the Americans were in the wrong? Maybe; but he did not see much point in getting all judgy about it: “the question is not whether [the Americans’] spirit deserves praise or blame, [but] what ... shall we do with it!”