I. Edmund Burke . Burke's Political Philosophy. In any ancient community such as that of France or Britain, every constituent factor, including what we choose to call the people, is the product of convention. The privileges of every order, the rights of every individual, rest upon prescription embodied in law or established by usage. There is, therefore, no right of revolution, or rebellion at will.
Revolution is always the annulment of some rights.
It will be judged in the last resort by the degree in which it preserves as well as destroys, and by what it substitutes for what it takes away. 36 Burke's denunciation of the spirit or temper of the revolution follows as naturally from his philosophy of the state as that from the doctrine of the revolutionists. He and the revolutionists were at one in holding that there is a law, a principle superior to positive law, by which positive law must be tested. There can be no right which is incompatible with the very existence of the state. The established church is the recognition of the sacred character of the state.