Who was right about the French Revolution? Burke, Paine or someone else?

[angrysoba]

I was quite ignorant about the French Revolution so I decided to do a bit of reading on the subject. First of all I read a simple history called “The French Revolution” by Christopher Hibbert in which he states clearly, at the beginning that he has no interest in examining the ideas of the revolutionaries or counter-revolutionaries but rather concentrating on the people themselves.

Although I had known about the storming of the Bastille, the flight to Varennes and of course, the Terror, I hadn’t known about the September Massacres or even that much about many of the protagonists of the revolution. Although ostensibly neutral, Hibbert’s dislike of the revolutionaries seems particularly clear with his constant references to them being ugly and relishing blood. There’s lots of hacking off of genitals, frenzied slayings of nobles, parading of heads on pikes, the guillotine, even cannibalism while the King and Queen go to their deaths in relative dignity.

But I have just finished Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France and am now reading Thomas Paine’s spirited rebuttal of Burke and defence of the French Revolution, Rights of Man.

I can’t help thinking that while Paine’s principles are those I am more in favour of that Burke is the more clear-eyed of the two and on balance seems to have got the revolution right. In fact, he seemed to be even more prescient than even he would have expected given that he wrote his Reflections in 1790 before the September massacres, the Terror, the execution of the King; the very early days which even most liberal interpreters of the French Revolution think was a good period.

Burke’s argument is that the wisdom of the ages is a far better guide to good governance than some metaphysical musings by “doctors of philosophy” and he makes lots of sarcastic comments on the abilities of such people. Paine seems incredulous that Burke, who championed the American revolution (or war of secession) could talk this way and gives a litany of what seems like patent injustices that Burke is prepared to tolerate and a list of the great thinkers and principles which gestated for years before the Revolution itself. Nevertheless, Burke is unpersuaded that “rights of man” is any kind of consolation for a dysfunctional state and goes on to predict massacres, famine, increased radicalism and disorder in the country.

But, although he didn’t seem to have predicted the execution of the king – and Paine assured him it wouldn’t happen – maybe one of the most astounding things Burke wrote was the following passage on the nature of the new revolutionary army. I expect it is famous but I hadn’t heard about it before I read it the other day:

It is known, that armies have hitherto yielded a very precarious and uncertain obedience to any senate, or popular authority; and they will least of all yield to any assembly which is to have only a continuance of two years. The officers must totally lose the characteristic disposition of military men, if they see with perfect submission and due admiration, the dominion of the pleaders; especially when they find, that they have a new court to pay to an endless succession of those pleaders, whose military policy, and the genius of whose command (if they should have any) must be as uncertain as their duration is transient. In the weakness of one kind of authority, and in the fluctuation of all, the officers of an army will remain for some time mutinous and full of faction, until some popular general, who understands the art of conciliating the soldiery, and who possesses the true spirit of command, shall draw the eyes of all men upon himself. Armies will obey him on his personal account. There is no other way of securing military obedience in this state of things. But the moment in which that event will happen, the person who really commands the army is your master; the master (that is little) of your king, the master of your assembly, the master of your whole republic.

Taking the long view, was the French Revolution a good thing or a bad thing? Who was ultimately correct about the Revolution or should we take the words of Zhou Enlai, who probably did not say of the French Revolution, that it is too soon to tell?

If you think there have been other, far more incisive commentators on the French Revolution or know of any must-reads then please also let me know.

 

[angrysoba]

After one day, two posters have said that Tom Paine was right. I find that a perfectly acceptable answer although it would be more interesting if those people explained why.

 

[Jensen]

Maybe because very few people her would like to vote for an ultra religious conservative freak like Burke who made a name for himself as a supporter of an insane tyrannic dictator?

 

[Brown]

Read Christopher Hitchens's analysis in his book about Paine. Hitch COULD have effed up his analysis of the issues, but he this time he was pretty much on target. Why Paine? Read Hitch.

 

[MaGZ]

I’ll add this to spur the conversation.

The French Revolution: A Study in Democracy (1919) by Nesta Webster

http://www.archive.org/details/frenchrevolutio00websuoft

 

[Foolmewunz]

If only there was an example somewhere of a Republic (Republique) or Democracy with a long and successful military tradition of supporting the "Assembly", "Senat", or "Congress".

Unless you're saying that Canada, Australia, England, and the USA have had a mutiny every two years, it'd be pretty hard to choose the Burke option. (For those who missed that chapter, I believe the English armed forces and U.S. armed forces both report to their respective assemblies and have somewhat managed to dominate the world, militarily, for the past 150 years.

 

[angrysoba]

Maybe because very few people her would like to vote for an ultra religious conservative freak like Burke who made a name for himself as a supporter of an insane tyrannic dictator?

Interesting that so many people would be of the opinion that Burke made a name for himself as a supporter of an insane tyrannic dictator given that both Burke and Paine do agree that Louis XVI was no tyrant.

It was not against Louis XVIth, but against the despotic principles of the government, that the nation revolted. These principles had not their origin in him, but in the original establishment, many centuries back; and they were become too deeply rooted to be removed, and the augean stable of parasites and plunderers too abominably filthy to be cleansed, by anything short of a complete revolution...

...The King was known to be favourable to the nation...Perhaps no man bred up in the style of an absolute king, ever possessed a heart so little disposed to the exercise of that species of power as the present king.

Paine goes on a bit more about how Burke confuses people with principles saying that the revolution was not carried out against the King but against rule by absolute monarchy.

In fact, up until the writing of the Reflections, Burke had made his name as a rebel MP who had supported the American revolution and opposed the harsh Penal Laws on Irish Catholics. He had also championed reform of and ultimately the abolition of the slave trade and it is probably because of his reputation as being against tyranny and unjust government that stung Thomas Paine so much when he declared himself against the French Revolution.

I also don't think the charges of "ultra religious" stick to Burke who was considered to be rather too un-Protestant and rather too likely Catholic for many.

 

[angrysoba]

Read Christopher Hitchens's analysis in his book about Paine. Hitch COULD have effed up his analysis of the issues, but he this time he was pretty much on target. Why Paine? Read Hitch.

Thanks. I received his book a day or two ago and will probably read that once I have finished Paine.

I am also not going to vote until I have finished reading Hitchens.

However, the book is not without some criticism. This review in the London Review of Books is withering:

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n23/john-barrell/the-positions-he-takes

 

[angrysoba]

If only there was an example somewhere of a Republic (Republique) or Democracy with a long and successful military tradition of supporting the "Assembly", "Senat", or "Congress".

Unless you're saying that Canada, Australia, England, and the USA have had a mutiny every two years, it'd be pretty hard to choose the Burke option. (For those who missed that chapter, I believe the English armed forces and U.S. armed forces both report to their respective assemblies and have somewhat managed to dominate the world, militarily, for the past 150 years.

Well, as I said above, Burke supported the American Revolution so some account would have to be given for why he thought it was more likely in the French rather than the American. He also considered the constitution of England to be far superior to the constitution set up by French revolutionaries as well as the National Assembly. He was specifically saying that France's constitution is so tailored that a) there is no check on the assembly - as it was unicameral, unlike that of England (and the US for that matter) and b) the terms in office were too short (two years) with an enforced two year break after sitting in the Assembly meaning that no one would have time to learn their trade and couldn't possibly earn the respect of the Army.

It wasn't just mutiny that Burke predicted, it was this:

In the weakness of one kind of authority, and in the fluctuation of all, the officers of an army will remain for some time mutinous and full of faction, until some popular general, who understands the art of conciliating the soldiery, and who possesses the true spirit of command, shall draw the eyes of all men upon himself. Armies will obey him on his personal account. There is no other way of securing military obedience in this state of things. But the moment in which that event will happen, the person who really commands the army is your master; the master (that is little) of your king, the master of your assembly, the master of your whole republic.

At the time, Napoleon was only a minor officer in the French army and would surely have been unknown to Burke and Paine. Yet, Paine is more interested in ridiculing the idea of an English constitution given that it isn't written (therefore it doesn't exist, in Paine's view) and questioning Burke's idea of hereditary power (hence no House of Lords, thank you very much) to give much time to the consideration of Army loyalty or a new kind of despotism rising out of the carnage.

It is this, rather than whether Burke's allegiance to hereditary rule vs. Paine's far more democratic outlook that I am wondering about when I ask who got it right about the French Revolution.

In that case I seem to find it hard to vote for Paine, but I could be persuaded.

 

[Foolmewunz]

Well, I would've found it easier to not vote against Burke if I was familiar with the piece in question. So my apologies.

You left off the opening sentence of the paragraph, and not being a follower of Burke, I didn't recognize that he was addressing it to specifically the events of recent memory and not to a general philosophy.

What he's saying is that as a culmination of the almost complete breakdown of the structures after the revolution it is very hard to imagine the French Assembly gaining control over or loyalty from the military, since they (the Assembly and the backers of the revolution) taught the military that disorder and even mutiny rule the day. He specifically addresses the downwards spiral from the taking of power from the monarchy (by the Assembly), then the cities taking power from the Assembly and the serviceman taking power unto themselves.

I would like him to have lived long enough to compare his thoughts on the American Revolution and the French and specifically how Washington did not seize the day and the loyalty of the troops to create his own dynasty (which is what he seems to be extrapolating in regards to France).

Maybe he just didn't like the French? I doubt it, but I think like a lot of "gentlemen" of his time, he was aghast at the thought of upper class heads rolling across the Carre Publique.

 

[Crossbow]

I think that jsut about that everyone who studies the French Revolution comes up with different conclusion as to origins of the French Revolution.

In short, I do not think that there is any one reason for it, but rather a host of reasons which all came to a head at more-or-less the same time.

 

[angrysoba]

Well, I would've found it easier to not vote against Burke if I was familiar with the piece in question. So my apologies.

No problem. I didn't see anything in your post that you need to apologize for.

You left off the opening sentence of the paragraph, and not being a follower of Burke, I didn't recognize that he was addressing it to specifically the events of recent memory and not to a general philosophy.

You're right. I probably should have included it but I thought the passage was long enough already. Very well:

It is besides to be considered, whether an assembly like yours, even supposing that it was in possession of another sort of organ through which its orders were to pass, is fit for promoting the obedience and discipline of an army.

And yes, that would have made it clearer that he was talking specifically of France's constitution. The Reflections is quite a long work - something that Paine ribbed him for in his reply - and not very logically structured; he seems to go off on rambling tirades which are not always that focussed.

What he's saying is that as a culmination of the almost complete breakdown of the structures after the revolution it is very hard to imagine the French Assembly gaining control over or loyalty from the military, since they (the Assembly and the backers of the revolution) taught the military that disorder and even mutiny rule the day. He specifically addresses the downwards spiral from the taking of power from the monarchy (by the Assembly), then the cities taking power from the Assembly and the serviceman taking power unto themselves.

Yes, that's pretty much it. In some way he is saying the French military will eventually choose its leader and when they do that leader will rule France. He was right, in that part anyway, as the rise of Napoleon seemed to demonstrate.

I would like him to have lived long enough to compare his thoughts on the American Revolution and the French and specifically how Washington did not seize the day and the loyalty of the troops to create his own dynasty (which is what he seems to be extrapolating in regards to France).

There are some more writings of his which followed the Reflections which are known as Letters of a Regicide Peace which I haven't got or read in which he apparently rages against the idea of England making peace with France. I wonder if he addressed Paine's work here.

Maybe he just didn't like the French? I doubt it, but I think like a lot of "gentlemen" of his time, he was aghast at the thought of upper class heads rolling across the Carre Publique.

It's possible. He makes some insults against the French and how England was so much better constructed following the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688 when England obtained a Dutch king (something else that Paine chortles at). From that revolution in England, a certain Revolutionary Society got its name and it was in response to a sermon made by one Rev. Dr Price of the Revolutionary Society that Burke was replying to. He was indeed worried that these Englishmen in their revolutionary clubs with their wild enthusiasm were going to bring the revolution to England too just as the American Revolution had in some way moved on to France.

The thing is that at this time, there wasn't a lot of headchopping going on as it was very early in the revolution (1790). But Paine and some Prussian nob called Cloots were telling Burke to cheer up and head over to France and see how great things were going. Of course, Paine ended up in jail and Cloots was executed by, I think, the Jacobins.

 

[angrysoba]

I think that jsut about that everyone who studies the French Revolution comes up with different conclusion as to origins of the French Revolution.

In short, I do not think that there is any one reason for it, but rather a host of reasons which all came to a head at more-or-less the same time.

Maybe so but I am more interested in the effects rather than the cause(s) of the French Revolution.

 

[Kaosium]

If only there was an example somewhere of a Republic (Republique) or Democracy with a long and successful military tradition of supporting the "Assembly", "Senat", or "Congress".

Unless you're saying that Canada, Australia, England, and the USA have had a mutiny every two years, it'd be pretty hard to choose the Burke option. (For those who missed that chapter, I believe the English armed forces and U.S. armed forces both report to their respective assemblies and have somewhat managed to dominate the world, militarily, for the past 150 years.

Eh, allow him a little hyperbole, he is up against Paine in this contest is he not?

Ah...Thomas Paine, "Rights of Man", one of the most beautiful and stirring treatise on liberty of the Enlightenment, a profound document that detailed and defended human rights and dignity throughout the English-speaking world, because of course, he wrote in in English.

Ils parlent français en France!

They speak French in France!

They had their own version of the Rights of Man, they were quite proud of it, and with good reason, it too is a profound document. However there's a right way¹ of going about something, and there's a wrong² way, that's what Burke was trying to get across. He was saying that if you're broke, unemployed and hungry, the best course of action may not be to kill your parents, burn down your home, and throw your sister to the streets to scrounge for food, and do whatever to survive.³
The house needed some work, it had become somewhat dilapidated over time, there'd been some debts to pay, mainly to stop some Austrian Empress who was trying to ignore Salic Law which was associated with such 'memorable shame' in some English-speaking Bard's great play, so they had to try to do something about that. They failed, a pragmatic German got some goodies called 'Silesia' though. Then sometime later he decided to snack on someplace called 'Saxony,' and they had to do something about that.

They failed, despite having most of continental Europe behind them, that pragmatic German was one tough SOB and those damned English were bringing the 'memorable shame' again, and their progeny, a collection English-speaking ruffians overseas, helped denude them of wide swaths of the New World, nevermind about that. A little while later, those English-speaking ruffians across the sea extended a large extended middle finger towards their English forebears, now was the chance to repay them for all that 'memorable shame!' Perfidious Albion was subdued! They lost their ruffians! Except now France was really broke. Sacrebleu!

So they started eying the house, kicked over some walls, started looking at mom and dad ominously, grabbing them by their petticoats⁴ locking them in and...Edmund Burke figures he knows how this story is going to end, so he tries to 'stand athwart history yelling "Stop!"'

C'mon, he says, it's not so bad. You had a great chance here and you're about to burn down the house? Don't!⁵ There's a right way of doing things, and there's a wrong way. Mom and dad may be out of touch, but you know parents just don't understand, you still need to eat don't you? Why set everything aflame listening to this rap music philosophy? Your rich people are fleeing, your educated as well, the mob rules,⁶ the bully⁷ down the street's just gonna take over soon, he knows how to deal with the mob!⁸
Paine got pissed, he wrote his flowery fiery prose, a testament to the dignity of mankind, everything good and noble about revolution, in English. (They speak French in France) He even moved there, after telling off Burke for being such a old fuddy-duddy. He got involved, and all of a sudden he found out Burke was right! They were kinda nasty there, his friends started disappearing and ending up a head shorter than they were. They almost saved him some money in neckties too, I guess teaching him if you move to France, you better learn French! They thought he was a Royalist, Thomas Paine! Talk about your translation errors, the utter indignity of him almost going the way of the Kings he'd dedicated his life to fighting the power of. It turns out he was a weenie compared to the likes of the Révolutionnaires.

So France got the Le Règne de la Terreur, tens of thousands died, and they also got the military coup, someone named Napoleon found the crown of France in a gutter and picked it up and placed it on his head, the First Republic lasted a decade or so. Hundreds more thousands of Frenchmen died in perpetual war, it gets cold in Russia by the way. Then they got themselves a new King, (yay! the Bourbons are back!) the mob rose and they were honored with a Citizen-King, and the mob rose again. Now it was time for the Second Republic, to which they elected a guy by the name of Napoleon, (hmm....) who decided to run for re-election four years later by declaring himself Emperor and founding the Second Empire, whose notable achievement was widening the streets of Paris with boulevards (you can see them today) to stop the mob from rising and cutting off the city. So no more mob, and they finally have the Third Republic, courtesy of a butt-kicking by the Germans, so minus the territory of Alsace-Lorraine where Joan of Arc was from; that must have hurt. So it took them about eighty years after Burke's letters to found a republic that would last, and along the way they got everything he told them and then some. They did get a cool song out of it though!

What the ones who speak English got was a fascinating debate between two of the titans of their time, and perhaps a reminder that there's no 'magic wands,' sometimes when you break eggs all you get is a big mess, and if you 'break it, you bought it' then perhaps you ought to have thought of that before you broke it, hundreds and thousands of years of history and culture doesn't melt away just because of pretty words sometimes, you gotta grow into it a little. You'll note while the French were going back and forth between Emperors and Kings the ones that read English saw their liberty and prosperity grow by leaps and bounds.

Anyway, I kinda got carried away with the footnotes as I just figured out how to do that and found a copy of "Reflections" online. I also found a copy of Carlyle's history if you want to give that a read. It was written about fifty years after and he has a way with words in my opinion, and it's an exhaustive account from a perspective that can also present the spirit of the times in a way that some more modern accounts don't. I added a sample at the bottom.

Oh, I voted for Burke, so did Gibbon BTW. Paine's more fun to read though!


¹

All the oblique insinuations concerning election bottom in this proposition, and are referable to it. Lest the foundation of the king’s exclusive legal title should pass for a mere rant of adulatory freedom, the political divine proceeds dogmatically to assert, 1 that, by the principles of the Revolution, the people of England have acquired three fundamental rights, all which, with him, compose one system, and lie together in one short sentence; namely, that we have acquired a right
“To choose our own governors.”
“To cashier them for misconduct.”
“To frame a government for ourselves.”

²

We must recall their erring fancies to the acts of the Revolution which we revere, for the discovery of its true principles. If the principles of the Revolution of 1688 are anywhere to be found, it is in the statute called the Declaration of Right. In that most wise, sober, and considerate declaration, drawn up by great lawyers and great statesmen, and not by warm and inexperienced enthusiasts, not one word is said, nor one suggestion made, of a general right “to choose our own governors; to cashier them for misconduct; and to form a government for ourselves.”

Emphasis retained

³

Few barbarous conquerors have ever made so terrible a revolution in property. None of the heads of the Roman factions, when they established “crudelem illam hastam” in all their auctions of rapine, have ever set up to sale the goods of the conquered citizen to such an enormous amount. It must be allowed in favour of those tyrants of antiquity, that what was done by them could hardly be said to be done in cold blood. Their passions were inflamed, their tempers soured, their understandings confused, with the spirit of revenge, with the innumerable reciprocated and recent inflictions and retaliations of blood and rapine. They were driven beyond all bounds of moderation by the apprehension of the return of power with the return of property, to the families of those they had injured beyond all hope of forgiveness.

⁴

History will record, that on the morning of the 6th of October, 1789, the king and queen of France, after a day of confusion, alarm, dismay, and slaughter, lay down, under the pledged security of public faith, to indulge nature in a few hours of respite, and troubled, melancholy repose. From this sleep the queen was first startled by the voice of the sentinel at her door, who cried out her to save herself by flight—that this was the last proof of fidelity he could give—that they were upon him, and he was dead. Instantly he was cut down. A band of cruel ruffians and assassins, reeking with his blood, rushed into the chamber of the queen, and pierced with a hundred strokes of bayonets and poniards the bed, from whence this persecuted woman had but just time to fly almost naked, and, through ways unknown to the murderers, had escaped to seek refuge at the feet of a king and husband, not secure of his own life for a moment.

⁵

You might, if you pleased, have profited of our example, and have given to your recovered freedom a correspondent dignity. Your privileges, though discontinued, were not lost to memory. Your constitution, it is true, whilst you were out of possession, suffered waste and dilapidation; but you possessed in some parts the walls, and, in all, the foundations, of a noble and venerable castle. You might have repaired those walls; you might have built on those old foundations. Your constitution was suspended before it was perfected; but you had the elements of a constitution very nearly as good as could be wished.

⁶

Not one drop of their blood have they shed in the cause of the country they have ruined. They have made no sacrifices to their projects of greater consequence than their shoe-buckles, whilst they were imprisoning their king, murdering their fellow-citizens, and bathing in tears, and plunging in poverty and distress, thousands of worthy men and worthy families. Their cruelty has not even been the base result of fear. It has been the effect of their sense of perfect safety, in authorizing treasons, robberies, rapes, assassinations, slaughters, and burnings, throughout their harassed land. But the cause of all was plain from the beginning.

⁷

This military aid may serve for a time, whilst the impression of the increase of pay remains, and the vanity of being umpires in all disputes is flattered. But this weapon will snap short, unfaithful to the hand that employs it. The Assembly keep a school, where, systematically, and with unremitting perseverance, they teach principles, and form regulations, destructive to all spirit of subordination, civil and military—and then they expect that they shall hold in obedience an anarchic people by an anarchic army.

⁸

You do not imagine, Sir, that I am going to compliment this miserable distinction of persons with any long discussion. The arguments of tyranny are as contemptible as its force is dreadful. Had not your confiscators, by their early crimes, obtained a power which secures indemnity to all the crimes of which they have since been guilty, or that they can commit, it is not the syllogism of the logician but the lash of the executioner, that would have refuted a sophistry which becomes an accomplice of theft and murder. The sophistic tyrants of Paris are loud in their declamations against the departed regal tyrants, who in former ages have vexed the world. They are thus bold, because they are safe from the dungeons and iron cages of their old masters. Shall we be more tender of the tyrants of our own time, when we see them acting worse tragedies under our eyes? shall we not use the same liberty that they do, when we can use it with the same safety? when we speak honest truth only requires a contempt of the opinions of those whose actions we abhor?

At bottom, nevertheless, it might puzzle one to say where the Government of France, in these days, specially is. In that Chateau of Versailles, we have Nestor, King, Queen, ministers and clerks, with paper-bundles tied in tape: but the Government? For Government is a thing that governs, that guides; and if need be, compels. Visible in France there is not such a thing. Invisible, inorganic, on the other hand, there is: in Philosophe saloons, in Oeil-de-Boeuf galleries; in the tongue of the babbler, in the pen of the pamphleteer. Her Majesty appearing at the Opera is applauded; she returns all radiant with joy. Anon the applauses wax fainter, or threaten to cease; she is heavy of heart, the light of her face has fled. Is Sovereignty some poor Montgolfier; which, blown into by the popular wind, grows great and mounts; or sinks flaccid, if the wind be withdrawn? France was long a 'Despotism tempered by Epigrams;' and now, it would seem, the Epigrams have get the upper hand.

 

[angrysoba]

Fantastic post, Kaosium! And thanks for the recommendation of Carlyle. I understand that Carlyle didn't quite go as far as Burke but thought that the bourgeois stage of the revolution was a good thing.

I agree very much when you say that Paine was just a little startled by how far the revolutionaries wanted to go. I didn't realize he was confused for a Royalist but I understand that he was one of the more moderate Girondins, so indeed your analogy of him being some kind of rebellious teenager who didn't know how the world really worked was a little bit true. A radical rebel revolutionary he may have been in England but in France he was a big softie who got squeamish at the thought of executing the king.

That ends the mystery of who the sole voter for Burke has been so far. I still haven't voted yet and think I should hear Paine out before I dispatch him to the guillotine make up my mind.

 

[stilicho]

Fantastic post, Kaosium! And thanks for the recommendation of Carlyle. I understand that Carlyle didn't quite go as far as Burke but thought that the bourgeois stage of the revolution was a good thing.

I agree very much when you say that Paine was just a little startled by how far the revolutionaries wanted to go. I didn't realize he was confused for a Royalist but I understand that he was one of the more moderate Girondins, so indeed your analogy of him being some kind of rebellious teenager who didn't know how the world really worked was a little bit true. A radical rebel revolutionary he may have been in England but in France he was a big softie who got squeamish at the thought of executing the king.

That ends the mystery of who the sole voter for Burke has been so far. I still haven't voted yet and think I should hear Paine out before I dispatch him to the guillotine make up my mind.

It would be hard to state that one or the other was "right" or "wrong" about the French Revolution (actually a series of events that could be argued to have endured until past 1848).

The three biggest obstacles to technological progress, mass education, urbanisation, freer movement of the elements of the economy, and almost everything we take for granted today were the institutions of the monarchy, the landed aristocracy, and the Church. I doubt either Burke or Paine would instantly recognise the institutions we possess today that act as a bulwark against those older ones.

The English were guilty of regicide before the French were, too. Namier argues that Napoleon III was the first mountebank dictator but it's probable that Cromwell was just as capricious.

 

[angrysoba]

It would be hard to state that one or the other was "right" or "wrong" about the French Revolution (actually a series of events that could be argued to have endured until past 1848).

In some ways yes, but given that they have very different expectations about what the French Revolution would usher in, it is possible to see who was right in their predictions.

I think Kaosium made a good point here:

So it took them about eighty years after Burke's letters to found a republic that would last, and along the way they got everything he told them and then some. They did get a cool song out of it though!

Of course I did also allow for the long-view option:

Taking the long view, was the French Revolution a good thing or a bad thing? Who was ultimately correct about the Revolution or should we take the words of Zhou Enlai, who probably did not say of the French Revolution, that it is too soon to tell?

The three biggest obstacles to technological progress, mass education, urbanisation, freer movement of the elements of the economy, and almost everything we take for granted today were the institutions of the monarchy, the landed aristocracy, and the Church. I doubt either Burke or Paine would instantly recognise the institutions we possess today that act as a bulwark against those older ones.

Which is presumably to argue that despite all the death, destruction, decapitations and despotism they removed those impediments to social equality - the monarchy, the aristocracy and the Church - making the revolution a necessary evil even if it didn't live up to its promise of immediate emancipation.

Yet, that is not very convincing, in my opinion, given that England serves as a pretty good experimental control. There too there was the monarchy, the aristocracy lording it over the commoners (just ask Burke!) and a fairly formidible institution of the Church of England while the House of Commons seats were full of rotten boroughs often literally bought by those who wanted to sit in Parliament (just ask Charles James Fox!). Suffrage was incredibly low, as Paine points out to Burke, and it was a series of reforms as well as some violent confrontations such as the Peterloo Massacre which eventually ended with England becoming a country with a somewhat more reasonable suffrage. France may have had universal male suffrage since 1848, but universal suffrage including women wasn't introduced until 1944!

Now, it may be argued that France and England started at different places with England being a slightly freer place than France was at the time. But the point is that Burke and Paine didn't see much difference themselves and Burke was really concerned to see that an English Revolution didn't happen in the style of the French, as the full title of Burke's writings makes clear:

Reflections on the Revolution in France, And on the Proceedings of Certain Societies in London Relative to that Event

The English were guilty of regicide before the French were, too. Namier argues that Napoleon III was the first mountebank dictator but it's probable that Cromwell was just as capricious.

True but I doubt Burke appaluded Oliver Cromwell's Protectorate, there was far too much about Cromwell that he surely would have despised. Besides, the Restoration annulled that regicide, in some way.

I don't know anything about Namier, however, Conor Cruise O'Brien - who wrote the Introduction to my edition of the Reflections says this of him:

Burke's posthumous reputation...came under attack in Britain.The attack was not primarily directed at Burke himself. It arose because Sir Lewis Namier - the most influential historian of his time in Britain - was trying to vindicate the reputation of George III from the aspersions cast on it by the Whig tradition in British historiography. Within that tradition Burke's memory and authority were held in veneration, and so it became Namier's task, and that of his numerous and devoted supporters in British academia, to undermine Burke's reputatino, which they did skillfully and in a sidelong manner.

 

[Kaosium]

It would be hard to state that one or the other was "right" or "wrong" about the French Revolution (actually a series of events that could be argued to have endured until past 1848).

His remarks do seem prescient however, I think his point was more along the lines of there was a better way to do this, Burke was no enemy of freedom, but he didn't think they'd achieve it in the manner they were progressing, they really had no clue what they were doing,¹ and in that regard I'd have to say he had a point. I linked the Declarations of the Rights of Man above, is that what they got, or did they get the man on horseback instead?

The three biggest obstacles to technological progress, mass education, urbanisation, freer movement of the elements of the economy, and almost everything we take for granted today were the institutions of the monarchy, the landed aristocracy, and the Church. I doubt either Burke or Paine would instantly recognise the institutions we possess today that act as a bulwark against those older ones.

However Burke's point was more along the lines of if you destroy all institutions of order in a society you are left with the mob and the military, will people eat pretty words? Who will the Army follow? Is it not better to reform² than to destroy? The difference between bad and worse can oftentimes be far starker than the distinction between bad and better. Was the French monarchy really a tyrannical despotism?³ No, it was something that could be worked with, something that could control the army, that it would respect--as long as the Assembly respected the King.⁴ The Assembly, by destroying all other institutions in the country made the Army the ultimate authority for resolving disputes,⁵ it placated it by allowing it to elect its officers, what is to stop the army from 'electing' it's own commander in chief?⁶
Vive Napoléon!

The English were guilty of regicide before the French were, too. Namier argues that Napoleon III was the first mountebank dictator but it's probable that Cromwell was just as capricious.

Burke regarded Cromwell as an usurper as well⁷ however not one that destroyed all the nations institutions, enough was left for recovery. It's interesting you bring him up, as Burke obviously couldn't foresee that it would be Napoleon who would be the man on horseback, and in the sixth citation below you can see who he suspected, Marquis de Lafayette, who didn't want a crown and would refuse it later in life as well. It is said that after the mob stormed Versailles and order was restored, he sent for a book, a history of Charles I...


¹

The effect of liberty to individuals is that they may do what they please: we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations, which may be soon turned into complaints. Prudence would dictate this in the case of separate, insulated, private men; but liberty, when men act in bodies, is power. Considerate people, before they declare themselves, will observe the use which is made of power; and particularly of so trying a thing as new power in new persons, of whose principles, tempers, and dispositions they have little or no experience, and in situations, where those who appear the most stirring in the scene may possibly not be the real movers.

²

Compute your gains: see what is got by those extravagant and presumptuous speculations which have taught your leaders to despise all their predecessors, and all their contemporaries, and even to despise themselves, until the moment in which they became truly despicable. By following those false lights, France has bought undisguised calamities at a higher price than any nation has purchased the most unequivocal blessings! France has bought poverty by crime! France has not sacrificed her virtue to her interest, but she has abandoned her interest, that she might prostitute her virtue. All other nations have begun the fabric of a new government, or the reformation of an old, by establishing originally, or by enforcing with greater exactness, some rites or other of religion. All other people have laid the foundations of civil freedom in severer manners, and a system of a more austere and masculine morality. France, when she let loose the reins of regal authority, doubled the license of a ferocious dissoluteness in manners, and of an insolent irreligion in opinions and practices; and has extended through all ranks of life, as if she were communicating some privilege, or laying open some secluded benefit, all the unhappy corruptions that usually were the disease of wealth and power. This is one of the new principles of equality in France.

³

To hear some men speak of the late monarchy of France, you would imagine that they were talking of Persia bleeding under the ferocious sword of Tahmas Kouli Khân; or at least describing the barbarous anarchic despotism of Turkey, where the finest countries in the most genial climates in the world are wasted by peace more than any countries have been worried by war; where arts are unknown, where manufactures languish, where science is extinguished, where agriculture decays, where the human race itself melts away and perishes under the eye of the observer. Was this the case of France? I have no way of determining the question but by reference to facts. Facts do not support this resemblance. Along with much evil, there is some good in monarchy itself; and some corrective to its evil from religion, from laws, from manners, from opinions, the French monarchy must have received; which rendered it (though by no means a free, and therefore by no means a good, constitution) a despotism rather in appearance than in reality.

⁴

Not they, but the king is the machine. A king is not to be deposed by halves. If he is not everything in the command of an army, he is nothing. What is the effect of a power placed nominally at the head of the army, who to that army is no object of gratitude, or of fear? Such a cipher is not fit for the administration of an object, of all things the most delicate, the supreme command of military men. They must be constrained (and their inclinations lead them to what their necessities require) by a real, vigorous, effective, decided, personal authority. The authority of the Assembly itself suffers by passing through such a debilitating channel as they have chosen. The army will not long look to an assembly acting through the organ of false show, and palpable imposition. They will not seriously yield obedience to a prisoner. They will either despise a pageant, or they will pity a captive king. This relation of your army to the crown will, if I am not greatly mistaken, become a serious dilemma in your politics.

⁵

Everything depends upon the army in such a government as yours; for you have industriously destroyed all the opinions, and prejudices, and, as far as in you lay, all the instincts which support government. Therefore the moment any difference arises between your National Assembly and any part of the nation, you must have recourse to force. Nothing else is left to you; or rather you have left nothing else to yourselves. You see, by the report of our war minister, that the distribution of the army is in a great measure made with a view of internal coercion. 4 You must rule by an army; and you have infused into that army by which you rule, as well as into the whole body of the nation, principles which after a time must disable you in the use you resolve to make of it. The king is to call out troops to act against his people, when the world has been told, and the assertion is still ringing in our ears, that troops ought not to fire on citizens. The colonies assert to themselves an independent constitution and a free trade. They must be constrained by troops. In what chapter of your code of the rights of men are they able to read, that it is a part of the rights of men to have their commerce monopolized and restrained for the benefit of others? As the colonists rise on you, the negroes rise on them. Troops again—Massacre, torture, hanging! These are your rights of men! These are the fruits of metaphysic declarations wantonly made, and shamefully retracted! It was but the other day, that the farmers of land in one of your provinces refused to pay some sort of rents to the lord of the soil. In consequence of this, you decree, that the country people shall pay all rents and dues, except those which as grievances you have abolished; and if they refuse, then you order the king to march troops against them.

⁶

How came the Assembly by their present power over the army? Chiefly, to be sure, by debauching the soldiers from their officers. They have begun by a most terrible operation. They have touched the central point, about which the particles that compose armies are at repose. They have destroyed the principle of obedience in the great, essential, critical link between the offices and the soldiers just where the chain of military subordination commences and on which the whole of that system depends. The soldier is told he is a citizen, and has the rights of man and citizen. The right of a man, he is told, is to be his own governor, and to be ruled only by those to whom he delegates that self-government. It is very natural he should think that he ought most of all to have his choice where he is to yield the greatest degree of obedience. He will therefore, in all probability, systematically do, what he does at present occasionally; that is, he will exercise at least a negative in the choice of his officers. At present the officers are known at best to be only permissive, and on their good behaviour. In fact, there have been many instances in which they have been cashiered by their corps. Here is a second negative on the choice of the king; a negative as effectual at least as the other of the Assembly. The soldiers know already that it has been a question, not ill received in the National Assembly, whether they ought not to have the direct choice of their officers, or some proportion of them? When such matters are in deliberation it is no extravagant supposition that they will incline to the opinion most favourable to their pretensions. They will not bear to be deemed the army of an imprisoned king, whilst another army in the same country, with whom too they are to feast and confederate, is to be considered as the free army of a free constitution. They will cast their eyes on the other and more permanent army; I mean the municipal. That corps, they well know, does actually elect its own officers. They may not be able to discern the grounds of distinction on which they are not to elect a Marquis de la Fayette (or what is his new name?) of their own. If this election of a commander-in-chief be a part of the rights of men, why not of theirs?

⁷

These disturbers were not so much like men usurping power, as asserting their natural place in society. Their rising was to illuminate and beautify the world. Their conquest over their competitors was by outshining them. The hand that, like destroying angel, smote the country, communicated to it the force and energy under which it suffered. I do not say, (God forbid)—I do not say, that the virtues of such men were to be taken as a balance to their crimes; but they were some corrective to their effects. Such was, as I said, our Cromwell. Such were your whole race of Guises, Condes, and Colignis. Such the Richelieus, who in more quiet times acted in the spirit of a civil war. Such, as better men, and in a less dubious cause, were your Henry the Fourth and your Sully, though nursed in civil confusions, and not wholly without some of their taint. It is a thing to be wondered at, to see how very soon France, when she had a moment to respire, recovered and emerged from the longest and most dreadful civil war that ever was known in any nation. Why? Because among all their massacres, they had not slain the mind in their country. A conscious dignity, a noble pride, a generous sense of glory and emulation, was not extinguished. On the contrary, it was kindled and inflamed. The organs also of the state, however shattered, existed. All the prizes of honour and virtue, all the rewards, all the distinctions remained. But your present confusion, like a palsy, has attacked the fountain of life itself. Every person in your country, in a situation to be actuated by a principle of honour, is disgraced and degraded, and can entertain no sensation of life, except in a mortified and humiliated indignation.

 

[angrysoba]

Read Christopher Hitchens's analysis in his book about Paine. Hitch COULD have effed up his analysis of the issues, but he this time he was pretty much on target. Why Paine? Read Hitch.

Well, I have finished reading Paine and I am most of the way through Hitchens’ book on Rights of Man.

Hitchens says that Burke was right:

Both Burke and Paine knew many things, and each knew one big thing as well. For Burke, the big thing was that the French Revolution would come to grief, and worse. For Paine, the big thing was that the age of chivalry was indeed dead, in that hereditary monarchy was doomed to give way to a democracy based on suffrage rather than property.

I don't consider Hitchens reliable in everything he writes and in some ways he is very much like Paine in believing that fine words can win the day but if anyone was going to put up a fight and insist that Paine's support of the French Revolution would be vindicated it would be Hitchens. In fact, Hitchens goes into quite some detail about how Paine felt betrayed by the Revolution, how it had ended in centralized power, murder, the rights of man being trampled and him having to leave for America so that he could freely speak out against Napoleon.

In the absence of a contrary view from the great contrarian and in the almost complete absence of any argument made on behalf of Paine here I am going to cast my vote for Burke.

 

[Pacal]

I myself cannot take take Burke too seriously. His overall predictions about the French Revolution turned out to be more or less correct but that is not because Burke saw and analysed the French Revolution with great accuracy. Burke's explaination for the Frebnch Revolution was that a bunch of philosophical dillatantes had taken over over the French State by means of a sort of conspiracy. Burke flavoured his tirades, which as he got older got increasingly unhinged, with hateful lies. He for example called Voltaire a man without concience. He also increasingly characterized the French supporters of the revolution, increasingly has a almost demonic force out to destroy civilization. He made virtually no effort to distinguish between moderate and radical revolutionaries, lumping them both together as evil. Burke utterly rejected any notion of a compromise with the Revolution which he regarded as an unmitigated evil and would continue to support in many of his wrtings the utterly untenable position of a full restoration of the old regime.

For all of his hysterical protests about the violence to the Royal family he seems to forget that Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette not only worked against the changes brought by the revolution but actively engaged in what can only be described as treason. Not surprisingly they got executed.

Since Burke's understanding of why the Revolution happenned is stunningly defective and amounts to a conspiracy by intellectuals. Oh and before it happenned Burke didn't think anything like that would happen in France. Burke never seemed to have got the idea that the French Revolution had deep causes. Further in the early years when Burke wrote his Reflections... the Revolution had from all appaerances overwhelming popular support. As the revolution got more extreme for various reasons things began to fall apart. But the reasons for that are complicated and not just that it was inevitable.

Burke also down plays when he doesn't ignore that themany French Revolutionaries greatly admired the British system of government and wanted to establish something like that in Britain. But of course Burke made mighty efforts to explain away the unpalatable fact that the Brtish system of government he so admired was to a large extent the product of the English Revolution of the mid 16th century whhich proportionally was more destructive and violent than the internal insurrections that occurred during the French Revolution in France. The Glorious Revolution of 1688 was acomplished by a foreign army and accompanied by much repression. I further note that both revolutions had their own Vendee in Ireland, with massive violence, dispossession and atrocities. I could add that Scotland also experienced revolutionary repression at this time. Burke more or less glides over this rather violent history.

One of the things that bothered Burke to no end was that in the French Revolution low class people were, horror of horrors, involved in government. He thought such people has wig makers etc., should have no involvement in government that was reserved for "gentlemen".

Towards the end of his life Burke got increasingly rabid, seeing the contest with the revolution and the "Rights of Man", as a mnichean struggle between the forces of light and darkness and increasingly demanding the utter expiration of the revolution. In particualrily incredible open letter Burke talks about how the revolutionaries get into the homes of aristocrats so that they can seduce aristocratic daughters and wives and thus establish "the rights of man" on a sure foundation.

Burke accussed the revolutionaries of destroying love and the family. Sounds woefully familar.

Burke showed very little ubderstanding of the causes of the French revolution and his manichean view of it was no help in containing its excesses and his preferred solution a return to the old regime, completely useless. Also his charaterization of all the revolutionaries as the same simply wrong. This of course leaves the question of why did his prophecies to a large part come true. Well aside from also being prophesised for the English Revolution, these are the all too common tropes of revolutions. One should not neglect the role of Loius XVI. Marie Antoinette and those around them in trying to reverse the changes and hence playing into the hands of the extremists. It is possible the REvolution could have been consolidated in 1790-1791 as a Constitutional monarchy, which I should point out was the goal of virtually all revolutionaries for the first two years of the revolution. How things got out of control would require hundreds of pages of amalysis and review rather than Burke's simple minded tale of philosophical fanatics hijacking a state.

Finally Burke's prediction that the survival of the French Revolution would destroy "civilization" etc., turned out to be false.