Learning will be cast into the mire, and trodden down under the hoofs of a swinish multitude.

This line comes from Edmund Burke’s polemical response to the French Revolution, written in 1790 as he warned British readers against revolutionary politics and the leveling of traditional institutions. In *Reflections on the Revolution in France*, Burke argues that when inherited social orders, religion, and established authority are overthrown in the name of abstract “rights,” the result is not enlightened liberty but cultural and moral degradation. The image of “learning” being trampled by a “swinish multitude” reflects his fear that mass politics and demagoguery would empower the uneducated crowd to despise refinement, scholarship, and the civilizing achievements of Europe.

Burke’s metaphor is deliberately abrasive: “learning” stands for the accumulated intellectual and cultural inheritance of a civilization, while the “mire” and “hoofs” evoke filth, violence, and contempt. The phrase expresses an elitist anxiety that popular upheaval can become anti-intellectual—destroying institutions (universities, churches, patronage, manners) that sustain serious thought and humane culture. More broadly, it encapsulates Burke’s conservative argument that knowledge and virtue are fragile social achievements, preserved by continuity and restraint, and easily ruined when political passions treat tradition as mere prejudice. The line’s notoriety also shows how Burke’s defense of order can shade into disdain for the crowd.