  Whether Burke was right in these claims about the Revolution, of course, is another question, and one that can never be answered: French readers of Reflections could take its lessons to heart, and, anyhow, events have a way of modifying tendencies independently of intention and interpretation. Indeed, none of this is to say that Reflections was intended as an academic work, or even an accurate factual statement, about the Revolution. It was calculated to produce a practical result, which was to dissuade the British from admiring the Revolution and so to dampen any propensity they might feel to imitate it: and thus to protect civilization in Britain. In the course of pursuing this goal, Burke was willing to satirize the Revolution and its British sympathizers unmercifully in order to make them as unattractive as possible to any sane reader, and he matched the satire with a panegyric on British social and political arrangements.  There is, indeed, much in Reflections besides the elements that have been emphasized here (and indeed much in Burke's later views on the Revolution which is not in Reflections): but without those elements neither the book nor Burke's understanding of the Revolution would have been possible.