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Debating the French Revolution: Edmund Burhe and Thomas Paine

Z The best-hnown debate on the French Revolution set the lrish-born conservative Edmund Burke against the i Aritith radtcal Thomas Paine. Burhe opposedthe French Revolution from the beginning His Reflections on the ! Revolution in France was published early, in 1790, when the French king was still securely on the throne. Burke i disagreed with the premises of the revolution. Rights, he argued, were not abstract and "natural" but the results i of specit'ic historical traditions. Remodeling the French government without ret'erence to the past and failing to pay i propu respect to tradition and custom had, in his eyes, destroyed the t'abric of French civilization. i Thomas Paine was one of many to respondto Burke. /n The Rights of lVlan (1791-1792), he det'endedthe i revolution and, more generally, concep.tions of human rights. ln the polarized atmosphere of the revolutionary i wars, simply possesstng Paine's pamphlet was cause for imprisonment in Britain.

Edmund Burhe

Mxil'ixi;r:l][]+::l the uniform policy of our constitution to claim and assert our liberties, as an entailed inheritance derived to us from our forefathers. . . . We have an inherit-

able crown; an inheritable peerage; and

a house of commons and a people inher-

iting privileges, franchises, and liberties,

from a long line of ancestors. . . .

You had all these advantages in your ancient states, but you chose to act as if you had never been moulded into civil society, and had every thing to begin anew. You began ill, becau'se you began by despising every thing that

belonged to you. . . . lf the last genera-

tions of your country appeared without

much luster in your eyes, you might have

passed them by, and derived your claims

from a more early race of ancestors. . . . Respecting your forefathers, you would

have been taught to respect yourselves. You would not have chosen to consider the French as a people ofyesterday, as a

nation of Iow-born servile wretches until

the emancipating year of .1789.. . . [Y]ou would not have been content to be rep- resented as a gang of Maroon slaves, suddenly broke loose from the house of bondage, and therefore to be pardoned for your abuse of liberty to which you were not accustomed and ill fitted. . . .

. . . The fresh ruins of France, which shock our feelings wherever we can

A Whig politician who had sympathized with the Ameri- can revolutionaries, Burke deemed the revolution in France a monstrous crime against the social order (see Competing Yiewpoints above).

Burke's famous book aroused some sympathy for the counterrevolutionary cause, but active opposition came slowly. The first European states to express public con- cern about events in revolutionary France were Austria and Prussia, deciar:ing in 1791, that order and the rights

598 | cxenrrn ra The FrenchRevolution I

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:i'H T.:fi t :: J;:':: l:I i::fl :: :,:? Hff : :, ;: "":'lJ H:..ffiare the display of incons

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our manners/ our civilize

good things which are

manners, and with civil this European world of

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Htr*ffi of the monarch of France were matters or ".o.*or,n,il est to ail sovereigns of Europe." The leaders of the nrerffi assembiy pronounced the declaration an affront to nuuoffi sovereignty. Nobles who had fled France played lnto 6[ hands witlr plots and pronouncements against ,f,. gor,fl ment. It was perhaps odd that both supporters and opfl nents of the revolution in France believed *r, *orla r,'ril their cause. The National Assembly's leaders .*p..t,d.fi aggressive policy would shore up the people's ,rrt,,

f

the midst of arms and confusions.

Learning paid back what it received to nobility and priesthood. . . . Happy if they

had all continued to know their indis- soluble union, and their proper place.

Happy if learning, not debauched bY ambition, had been satisified to continue

the instructor, and not aspired to be the

master! Along with its natural Protectors and guardians, learning will be cast into

the mire, and trodden down under the

hoofs of a swinish multitude.

Source: Edmund Burke, Relections on the Revolution

in Fronce (1790; New York: 1973), pp. 45, 48, 49,

52,92.

Thomas Paine

r. Burke, with his usual out- rage, abuses theDeclaration of

the Rights of Man.. . . Does ltr1r.

Burke mean to denY that man has anY rights? lf he does, then he must mean that there are no such things as rights

any where, and that he has none himself;

for who is there in the world but man?

But if lvlr. Burke means to admit that has rights, the question will then

be, what are those rights, and how came

by them originallY?

The error of those who reason by precedents drawn from antiquity,

ng the rights of man, is that theY

not go far enough into antiquitY stop in some of the intermedi-

stages of an hundred or a thousand

and produce what was then a rule

the present day. This is no authority

To possess ourselves of a clear idea

of what government is, or ought to be,

we must trace its origin. ln doing this,

we shall easily discover that Sovern- ments must have arisen either out of the

people, or over the people. lv1r. Burke has

made no distinction. . . .

What were formerlY called revolu-

tions, were little more than a change of persons, or an alteration of local circumstances. They rose and fell like

things of course, and had nothing in their existance or their fate that could

influence beyond the spot that pro- duced them. But what we now see in the

world, from the revolutions of America

and France, is a renovation ofthe natural

order of things, a system of principles as

universal as truth and the existance of

man, and combining moral with political

happiness and national prosperity.

Source: Thomas Paine,The Righu of Man (1791;

New York: 1973),PP.302, 308, 383.

.i , / L'l'ti r')'il t

/,,,/J ll jr-r' 8?0 ct Questions for Analysis

1. How does Burke define /ibertY? WhY

does he criticize the revolutionaries for representing themselves as slaves

freed from bondage?

2. What does Paine criticize about Burke's emphasis on history? Accord-

ing to Paine, what makes the French Revolution different from previous changes of regime in EuroPe?

3. How do these two authors' attitudes

about the origins of human freedoms

shape their understandings of the revolution?

bring freedom to the rest o[ Europe. Counterrevolutionaries

hoped the intervention of Austria and Prussia would undo

all thar had happened since 1789. Radicals' suspicious of

aristocratic leaders and the king, believed that war would

expose traitors with misgivings about the revolution and [Iush out those who sympathized with the king and Euro-

pean tyrants. On April 20,1792' the assembly declared war

against Austria and Prussia. Thus began the war that would

keep the Continent in arms for a generation.

As the radicals expected, the French forces met seri-

ous reverses. By August t792, the allied armies of Austria

and Prussia had crossed the frontier and were threatening

to capture Paris. Many, including soldiers, believed that

the military disasters were evidence of the king's trea- son. On August I0, Parisian crowds, organized by their radical leaders, attacked the royal palace. The king was

imprisoned, and a second and far more radical revolution

began.

A New Stage: Popular Revolution I SOO