MACAULAY, Catharine.

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Observations on the Reflections of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke, on the Revolution in France, First edition of the author's last work, in which she defends the ongoing French Revolution against criticism from Edmund Burke. From her usual republican perspective, Macaulay celebrates the revolution as the "sudden spread of an enlightened spirit" (p. 22) and decries Burke's preferred constitutional monarchy as "adapted rather to enslave our affections, than to lead our judgement" (p. 53).The author opposed Burke's belief in the inherited rights of Englishmen, which she dismissed as an arrogance that risked invoking prejudice against people from other nations. Her radicalism made her unpopular in England but popular in France and the United States. Her Observations preceded the execution of the French monarchy and the Reign of Terror, which Macaulay would likely have opposed, as she considered the same action in England to have rendered "Revolution and the Revolutionists odious, and thus paved the way for the restoration of the old government" (p. 61).Macaulay published a pamphlet called Letters on Education in the same year as the Observations. These made apparent her ideological similarities to Mary Wollstonecraft, and the two women exchanged letters in which they praised each other's work.

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