Even now, the Irish Burke’s anglophile confidence in his deeply held conservative position remains fairly breathtaking: Within a few months, he had produced this brilliant pamphlet – cast in the form of a letter “to a gentleman in Paris” – an instant bestseller, and a rhetorical tour de force that, in the words of the scholar Stephen Greenblatt, has become the “most eloquent statement of British conservatism favouring monarchy, aristocracy, property, hereditary succession, and the wisdom of the ages”. Price’s fiery provocation stirred Burke deeply. But Edmund Burke – a passionate conservative – was appalled by Price’s suggestion that the English king owed his position to his people, who should be at liberty to arraign him for misconduct. Price, a friend of Benjamin Franklin, was known for his support of both the French and the American revolutions, so this was hardly a surprise. O n 4 November 1789, the celebrated dissenting minister Richard Price, whose teaching at Newington Green, north London, had exerted a profound influence on many younger writers – notably Mary Wollstonecraft (No 76 in this series) – delivered a sermon in which he celebrated “the ardour for liberty” among the French people.
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