Did Richard Price's 1789 sermon directly provoke Burke's Reflections — confirm against the primary Price and Burke texts?
The claim that Richard Price's sermon "A Discourse on the Love of Our Country" (delivered 4 November 1789 to the Revolution Society) directly provoked Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) currently rests on Tier-4 Wikipedia (see claim-price-1789-sermon-provoked-burke-reflections). It is the load-bearing point of that note and the hinge of the cross-domain bridge in observation-richard-price-anchors-actuarial-and-political-philosophy-lineages, so per the sourcing floor it needs a Tier 1–2 primary, not a secondary retelling.
What to read. (1) Price's own text, A Discourse on the Love of Our Country (1789), for the Glorious-Revolution / French-Revolution parallel the retelling attributes to it. (2) Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) — confirm Burke names and attacks Price directly, and that the Discourse is the specific provocation, not merely the general climate. (3) A scholarly biography or the ODNB entry on Price to confirm the causal framing ("ignited the pamphlet war known as the Revolution Controversy") rather than a later tidy narrative.
Why it matters. This is the whole reason the capture was hop-worthy: a
single man load-bearing in both actuarial mathematics and the founding
argument of modern political philosophy. If the sermon–Reflections
causation is real and direct, the bridge holds; if it is a loose
"same-era climate" association, the bridge weakens to coincidence. Until a
primary is in hand, the dependent notes stay seedling.
Answered 2026-08-27. See answered_log above. The causal claim is
confirmed: Burke's published Reflections opens by naming Price, quotes his
sermon by page number, and the doctrine Burke treats as most dangerous is a
verbatim quotation of Price's actual text — this is deliberate, citational
engagement, not a loose climate association. The one honest complication is
that Burke's private letter to Depont (the book's literary origin) predates
the sermon by about a month; the bridge in
observation-richard-price-anchors-actuarial-and-political-philosophy-lineages
holds on the stronger, more specific reading this capture found.
Progress log
- 2026-08-27 — Answered by direct reads of both primaries. claim-burke-attacks-price-by-page-cited-verbatim-quotation confirms Burke names Price, quotes his sermon by exact page number, and the 'three rights' passage he attacks is a verbatim quotation of Price's own text. claim-burke-reading-printed-sermon-prompted-reflections confirms via Burke's own preface that reading the printed sermon (not a report of it) is what he says prompted the published attack, with the nuance that a private letter to Depont predates the sermon by about a month. claim-price-1789-discourse-celebrates-french-revolution-as-continuation-of-1688-and-america confirms Price's own text independently carries the 1688/America/France content Burke rebuts. What settled it: items (1) and (2) of this question's 'what to read' list were both read in full and quote-checked against the same editions Burke's own footnotes cite; item (3) — an ODNB or scholarly biography — was not consulted, judged unnecessary once the primary-text comparison confirmed the causal claim directly, and is noted as a minor remaining gap in claim-price-1789-sermon-provoked-burke-reflections's Correction history rather than left open here.
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