My reading of the Reflections thus far has been largely confined to a limited number of paragraphs and passages (whose complexity has demanded the extensive reading they have been given). Much the greater part of Burke's text is taken up not with confronting the French queen with the revolutionary mob but with discussions of British history, comparisons between British and French economics, and reflections on the relative merits of the systems of political representation on either side of the English Channel. Yet I want to show that the patterns, paradigms, and problems that have emerged in my articulation of the Enquiry and the Reflections shape Burke's discussions of economics, the law, political representation, and language as well as his emotive response to the events at Versailles. Regardless of Burke's manner or topic, the crisis he identifies himself as facing affects every facet of the socio-economic formation he defends and each discursive manner he attempts to defend it with.

The Reflections worries at a series of issues, each of which can be understood as paradigmatic of a general crisis in representation: the question of whether a king or a parliament may legitimately represent a nation; the concern that paper currency ought to be convertible into ‘real’ money; and the desire that language's representative power might not be perverted or undermined in any way. (It is significant that Paine responds to Burke on all these fronts, reproducing each of his anxieties yet locating proper and improper representation in quite different textual and political places.)