However, the king refused to sanction the Declaration, and on 5 October 1789 crowds of Parisians marched to Versailles to join the peasants in forcing the king and his family back to Paris. For Burke, this was a step too far, and it provoked him to write his critical pamphlet – which has been seen ever since as the classic rebuttal to would-be revolutionaries.
Government as organism
Burke was a Whig, a member of a British political party that favoured the gradual progress of society – as opposed to the Tory party, which strove to maintain the status quo. Burke championed emancipation for Catholics in Ireland and for India from the corrupt East India Company. But, unlike other Whigs, he believed the continuity of government was sacrosanct. In Reflections, he argues that government is like a living thing, with a past and a future. We cannot kill it and start anew, as the French revolutionaries aimed to do.
Burke sees government as a complex organism that grows over time into the subtle, living form that it is today. The nuances of its political being – from the behaviour of monarchs to the inherited aristocratic codes of behaviour – have developed over generations in such an elaborate way that nobody can understand how it all works. The habit of government is so deep-rooted among the ruling class, he says, that they barely have to think about it. Anyone believing they can use their powers of reason to destroy society and build a better one from scratch – such as Enlightenment thinker Jean-Jacques Rousseau – is foolish and arrogant.
John Bull is tempted by the devil, who hangs from the Tree of Liberty, symbolizing the fear of French revolutionary zeal spreading to England at the time of Burke’s writings.
Abstract rights
Burke is particularly damning of the Enlightenment concept of natural rights. They may be all very well in theory, he says, but that’s where the problem lies: “their abstract perfection is their practical defect”. Also, for Burke, a theoretical right to a good or service is of no use whatever if there is no means to procure it. There is no end to what people may reasonably claim as rights. In reality, rights are simply what people want, and it is the government’s task to mediate between the wants of people. Some wants can even include restraint on the wants of others.
It is a fundamental rule of any civil society, Burke says, “that no man should be judge in his own cause”. To live in a free and just society, a man must give up his right to determine many things he deems essential. In claiming that “the passions of individuals should be subjected”, Burke means that society must control the unruly will of the individual for the good of the rest. If everyone is allowed to behave as he wishes, expressing every passion and whim, the result is chaos. Indeed, not just individuals but the masses as a whole must be so constrained, “by a power out of themselves”.
This refereeing role requires “a deep knowledge of human nature and human necessities”, and is so complex that theoretical rights are a distraction.
Burke saw the discussion of abstract rights as a distraction from the main task of government – to mediate between the wants and needs of those they govern.
Habit and prejudice
Burke was sceptical of individual rights, arguing instead for tradition and habit. He viewed government as an inheritance to be carried forward safely into the future, and made a distinction between England’s Glorious Revolution of 1688 and France’s ongoing turmoil. The English revolution, which replaced the Catholic-leaning King James II with the Protestant William and Mary, was about preserving the status quo against a wayward monarch, not fabricating a new government, which would fill Burke with “disgust and horror”.
"The social contract… is between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born."
Edmund Burke
Burke defended an unthinking emotional response to respect the king and parliament as “the general bank and capital of nations”. He saw this as far superior to the vagaries of individual reason, but regarded prejudice as an age-old wisdom that could produce a fast, automatic response in emergencies that left the rational man hesitating.
The consequences of ignoring these traditions may be dire, Burke warned. New men entering the political fray would not be able to run an existing government, let alone a new one. Struggles between factions trying to step into the power vacuum would inevitably lead to bloodshed and terror – and a chaos so consuming that the military would have to take over.
The Burke revolution
Burke’s prediction of both the Terror in the French Revolution, which occurred in 1793 and 1794, and the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1799, earned him a reputation as something of a seer. His arguments appealed to those on the right, but were also a surprise to those on the left. Thomas Jefferson, then living in France as a US diplomat, wrote, “The Revolution in France does not astonish me as much as the revolution in Mr Burke”. In England, Thomas Paine immediately wrote The Rights of Man – published in 1791 – to challenge Burke’s argument against natural rights.
The power of property
Burke believed that society’s stability was underpinned by inherited property – the massive inherited properties of the landowning aristocracy. Only such rich landowners had the power, self-interest, and inherited political skill, Burke asserted, to prevent the monarchy over-reaching itself. The great size of their landholdings also acted as a natural protection for the lesser properties around them. In any case, he argued, the redistribution from the few to the many could only ever result in “inconceivably small” gains.
"The great feudal lords created an incomparably larger proletariat by the forcible driving of the peasantry from the land."
Karl Marx
Although Napoleon was eventually defeated, the revolutions that rolled on through Europe long after Burke’s death gave his ideas a special place in the hearts of those frightened by the uprisings. Burke’s plea for the continuity of government and society seemed to some to be a beacon of sanity in a mad world. However, for Karl Marx – who was particularly critical of Burke’s ideas on property – and many others, Burke’s defence of inequality was unacceptable. Burke argued persuasively against the trashing of tradition, but according to his critics, this leads ultimately to the defence of societies in which the majority are kept in a life of servitude, with no prospect of betterment and no say in their future. Burke’s defence of prejudice, intended as a call for sympathy for people’s natural inclinations, can end up as an argument for blind bigotry. His assertion that the passions of individuals should be subjected is potentially a justification for censorship, the persecution of dissenters, and a police state.
Napoleon Bonaparte swept to power in 1799, fulfilling Edmund Burke’s 1790 prediction that a military dictatorship would follow the revolutionary overthrow of the monarchy in France.
EDMUND BURKE
Born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1729, Burke was raised as a Protestant, while his sister, Juliana, was raised a Catholic. He initially trained as a lawyer, but soon gave up law to become a writer. In 1756, he published A Vindication of Natural Society, a satire of Tory leader Lord Bolingbroke’s views on religion. Soon after, he became private secretary to Lord Rockingham, the Whig prime minister.
In 1774, Burke became a Member of Parliament, later losing his seat due to the unpopularity of his views on the emancipation of Catholics. His fight for the abolition of capital punishment earned him a reputation as a progressive. However, his criticism of the French Revolution caused a spilt with the radical wing of his Whig party, and today he is remembered more for his conservative philosophy than his liberal views.
Key works
1756 A Vindication of Natural Society
1770 Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents
1790 Reflections on the Revolution in France
See also: Jean-Jacques Rousseau • Thomas Paine • Thomas Jefferson • Georg Hegel • Karl Marx • Vladimir Lenin • Michael Oakeshott • Michel Foucault
IN CONTEXT
IDEOLOGY
Republica
nism
FOCUS
Universal male suffrage
BEFORE
508 BCE Democracy in Athens gives all male citizens a vote.
1647 A radical part of Oliver Cromwell’s New Model Army calls for universal male suffrage and an end to monarchy.
1762 Jean-Jacques Rousseau publishes The Social Contract, arguing that sovereignty lies with the whole people.
AFTER
1839–48 Chartism, a mass movement in Britain, calls for universal male suffrage.
1871 A newly united German empire grants universal male suffrage.
1917–19 As World War I ends, democratic republics replace monarchies across Europe.
The English Revolution, which reached the peak of its radicalism with the trial and execution of King Charles I in 1649, had fizzled out by the end of the 17th century. The “Glorious Revolution” of 1688 had seen the restoration of the monarchy, now subordinate to Parliament, and the stabilization of the British state. No formal constitution was written, and the brief experiment with a republic under Oliver Cromwell was over. The new government was a hybrid made of a corrupt and unrepresentative Lower House in the Commons, a corrupt and unelected Upper House in the Lords, and a monarch who was still nominally head of state.
The 1689 Bill of Rights that set out the parameters for the new government was a compromise that satisfied few, least of all those most obviously excluded from it: the Irish, Catholics, and non-conformists; the poor and the artisans; even the more prosperous middle classes and employees of the state. It was from this milieu that Thomas Paine emerged, after emigrating to America in 1774. In a series of incendiary and wildly popular pamphlets, he sought to reclaim arguments for democracy and republicanism that had been made during Cromwell’s time.
The case for democracy
In Common Sense, published anonymously in Philadelphia in 1776, Paine made the case for a radical break by Britain’s North American colonists from both the British empire and constitutional monarchy. Like Hobbes and Rousseau before him, he argued that people come to form natural attachments to each other, creating a society from individuals. As these attachments of family, friendship, or trade become more complex, they in turn create a need for regulation. These regulations are systematized into laws, and a government is erected to create and enforce those laws. These laws are intended to act for the people, but there are too many people to make collective decisions. Democracy is required, to elect representatives.
"When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary."
Thomas Paine
Democracy, Paine held, was the most natural way to balance the needs of society with those of government. Voting would act as the regulating instrument between society and government, allowing society to shape government so that it more closely corresponded to social needs. Institutions such as monarchy were unnatural, since the hereditary principle stood apart from society as a whole, and monarchs could act in their own interests. Even a mixed state with a constitutional monarchy, as advocated by John Locke, would be dangerous, since a monarch could easily obtain more power and circumvent laws. Paine believed it was better to do away with the monarch entirely.
It followed that America’s best course of action in its war with the British empire was to refuse any compromise on the issue of the monarchy. Only with full independence could a democratic society be built. Paine’s clear and unequivocal call for a democratic republic was an immediate success in the midst of the Revolutionary War against the British empire. Returning to England in 1787, he visited France two years later, and became a firm supporter of the French Revolution.
The inattentive judges in William Hogarth’s satirical The Bench (1758) are portrayed as members of an idle, incompetent, and venal judiciary that has little regard for society’s rights.
Reflections on revolution
On returning from France, Paine had a rude awakening. Edmund Burke, MP for Bristol and one of the founders of modern conservative thought, had strongly supported the rights of American colonies to independence. Burke and Paine had been on friendly terms since Paine’s arrival back in England, but Burke had ferociously denounced the French Revolution, claiming in his 1790 Reflections on the Revolution in France that by its radicalism it threatened the very order of society. Burke viewed society as an organic whole, not amenable to sudden change. The American Revolution and Britain’s “Glorious Revolution” did not directly threaten long-established rights, but merely corrected some clear deformities in the system. In particular, they did not threaten the rights of property. But the situation in France, with its violent overthrow of the ancien regime, was clearly different.
Burke’s opposition caused Paine to defend his position. He replied with The Rights of Man, printed in early 1791. Despite official censorship, it became the best-known and widest-circulated of all English defences of the revolution in France. Paine argued for the rights of every generation to remake its political and social institutions as it saw fit, not bound by existing authority. A hereditary monarch had no claim to superiority over this right. Rights, not property, were the only hereditary principle, transmitted across the generations. A second part to the pamphlet, published in 1792, argued for a major programme of social welfare. By the end of the year, the two volumes had sold 200,000 copies.
The French National Assembly has its roots in the French Revolution’s National Convention, which was the country’s first governing assembly to be elected by universal male suffrage.
An end to monarchy
Under threat of prosecution, and with “Church and King” mobs burning his figure in effigy, Paine offered a still more radical step. His Letter Addressed to the Addresses on the Late Proclamation was written against “the numerous rotten boroughs and corporation addresses” that had published the royal proclamation against “seditious libel” – the writing and printing of texts that attacked the state. Paine, denouncing this and other abuses as a new tyranny, called for an elected National Convention to draft a new, republican constitution for England. This was a direct call for revolution in all but name, taking France’s republican National Convention as its model. Paine had returned to France shortly before the Address was published, and in his absence was found guilty of seditious libel.
The argument in the Address is brief, but tackles Burke head on. Although England’s Bill of Rights of 1689 gave guarantees about the rights all subjects would enjoy in a constitutional monarchy, it was open to abuse. Paine detailed some of the most obnoxious instances of corruption, but he wanted to go further and tackle the system itself. By defending hereditary property as the supreme law, this system drove the corruption and abuse. The tyranny of William Pitt’s government was a direct result of its defence of property. At the top of the regime was a hereditary monarch, and Parliament acted merely as a defence of Crown and property. Reform of the corrupt Parliament was not enough: the whole system had to be transformed, from the top down.
Universal male suffrage
Paine asserted that sovereignty should not lie with the monarch, but with the people, who have an absolute right to make or unmake laws and governments as they see fit. The existing system contained no mechanism to allow the people to change the government. It was therefore necessary, Paine argued, to sidestep the system by electing a new assembly – a National Convention, as in France.
"It will always be found, that when the rich protect the rights of the poor, the poor will protect the property of the rich."
Thomas Paine
Paine attempted to popularize an argument made by Rousseau: that the “general will” of the people should be sovereign in a nation, and that with transparent and fair elections to the Convention, private interests and corrupt practices would be squeezed out. Universal male suffrage would determine the delegates to the Convention, and these delegates would be charged with drafting a new constitution for Britain. It was England’s property qualification for voting that Paine held most responsib
le for the corruption and venality of the electoral system. Only in a system where the rights of both rich and poor were equally considered would each respect the other, and neither seek to rob the other.
A legacy for reform
Paine’s short pamphlet never quite achieved the success of either Common Sense or The Rights of Man, but the radical argument presented in the Address – for a republic, a new constitution, and a National Convention elected by universal male suffrage – formed the core of reformers’ demands in Britain for the next 50 years. The London Corresponding Society, from the 1790s onwards, called for a National Convention; the Chartists of the 1840s actually held a National Convention, which thoroughly alarmed the authorities; and the hated property qualification for voting was eventually removed in the 1867 Second Reform Act.
It was in Paine’s adopted countries of America and France that his ideas had the most impact – perhaps especially in the United States, where he is credited as one of the Founding Fathers of independence and the Constitution, and where his writings swayed thousands towards the cause of democracy and republicanism.
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