Quotation
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“A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.”
Edmund Burke · Political philosophy · Enlightenment · 1790
What does it mean?
The mainstream reading is conservative in his sense, not frozen: a state that cannot repair itself cannot keep itself, so change is a tool of preservation. A competing reading hears a liberal endorsement of revolution. The paragraph distinguishes the change he accepts, correction that regenerates a damaged part through the parts that still stand, from a demolition. He points to the Restoration and the Revolution of 1688, when England lacked a king and did not dissolve the fabric. The sentence is in the Reflections of 1790, inside the attack on the French Revolution's claim to begin again. Means of some change are means of conservation. A state that forbids every alteration, he says, risks the very inheritance it is trying to hold.
Did Edmund Burke really say this?
The library’s label is Well attested. Burke's own English in the Reflections. The next sentence says that without such means a state might lose the part of the constitution it most wished to preserve. The line is not a welcome to any change.
Where it comes from
Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)
Approximate date: 1790.
How to use it
A club in York whose constitution cannot be amended at all will eventually break it informally, or lose the members the constitution was written to keep. The sentence does not say every proposed rewrite is a repair. It says a total ban on change is not a way of conserving. Burke's test is whether the alteration keeps the fabric and fixes the deficient part. A faction that cites him for a bonfire of the rules has the book backwards. A faction that cites him for never touching a rule has the sentence backwards.
A mindset reading
Pair conservation with the capacity to correct, and do not let either word eat the other. The habit is to ask what a proposed change is trying to keep. He thinks abstract redesign, detached from the inheritance, destroys what it cannot rebuild. He also thinks a brittle refusal of all change destroys it more slowly. The sentence is the second warning, and it is the one his imitators drop.
Understand the philosophy
The Reflections argue with English admirers of the events of 1789. The key terms in this passage are conservation and correction. He has already described society as a partnership of the living, the dead, and the unborn, a line already in this library. This sentence is how that partnership stays alive without pretending the contract is rewritten every morning. Change, for him, is medicinal. It is not a value of its own.
- change
- society
- power
FAQ
What does it mean?
The mainstream reading is conservative in his sense, not frozen: a state that cannot repair itself cannot keep itself, so change is a tool of preservation. A competing reading hears a liberal endorsement of revolution. The paragraph distinguishes the change he accepts, correction that regenerates a damaged part through the parts that still stand, from a demolition. He points to the Restoration and the Revolution of 1688, when England lacked a king and did not dissolve the fabric. The sentence is in the Reflections of 1790, inside the attack on the French Revolution's claim to begin again. Means of some change are means of conservation. A state that forbids every alteration, he says, risks the very inheritance it is trying to hold.
Did Edmund Burke really say this?
Well attested. Burke's own English in the Reflections. The next sentence says that without such means a state might lose the part of the constitution it most wished to preserve. The line is not a welcome to any change.
Which work is it in?
Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) Approximate date: 1790.