"Published anonymously, Maistre’s Considérations was, at almost 250 pages in length in its first edition, on the long side for a pamphlet, but still much shorter than Burke’s Reflections. Without entering here into a comparison of the ideological positions of the two writers, it is nevertheless worthwhile to note how these two works resembled each other as pamphlets. Like Burke’s much longer work, Maistre’s pamphlet dealt with the topical issue of France’s Revolution, was addressed to a general audience (in Maistre’s case to a French audience), was persuasive in intent, and was both a shrewd tract for the times and a work of enduring significance. As was often the case in the ‘pamphlet wars’ of the period, both works were at least in part responses to earlier pamphlets. As is well known, the immediate stimulus for Burke was a sermon of 4 November 1789 by Dr Richard Price, later published with the title A Discourse on the Love of our Country. For Maistre, it was a pamphlet by Benjamin Constant entitled De la force du gouvernement actuel de la France et de la nécessité de s’y rallier."