The Burke-Paine Debate on the French Revolution

Summary

The Burke-Paine debate is the exchange between Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (November 1790) and Thomas Paine's Rights of Man (Part I, March 1791; Part II, February 1792), the most famous controversy among the many British pamphlets provoked by the French Revolution. This entry is a guide to the debate as a whole; it has no text of its own, and the two books are in the library separately with their full texts. The occasion was a sermon preached on November 4, 1789, by the Dissenting minister Richard Price to the Revolution Society in London, which hailed events in France and claimed that the Revolution of 1688 had given the British people the right to choose their governors, cashier them for misconduct, and frame a government for themselves. Burke, writing in the form of a long letter to a young Frenchman, Charles-Jean-François Depont, denied that 1688 established any such right. He argued that English liberties were an entailed inheritance from ancestors, held by prescription, and that a state must reform in order to preserve itself but never tear up its foundations for an abstract theory. He set the real rights of men, which are the advantages of civil society under law, against the metaphysical rights claimed in Paris, and described society as a partnership of the living, the dead, and those yet to be born. He mourned the treatment of the royal family in the October Days of 1789, defended the established church and the habits he called just prejudice, and predicted that the Revolution would end in disorder and military rule. Paine answered, in plain and combative prose, that every generation is as free as the one before it, that no Parliament could bind posterity forever, and that the rights of man come from the equal creation of all men, not from charters or precedent. Civil rights, he argued, are natural rights exchanged for security; a constitution is the act of a people forming a government, written and prior to it, and England had none in that sense. He mocked hereditary government, retold the fall of the Bastille, and accused Burke of pitying the plumage while forgetting the dying bird. Part II set out the representative system and proposed public provision for the poor, the aged, and the education of children, funded by reduced taxes on necessities and a graduated tax on large estates. Rights of Man sold in great numbers; Paine was tried for seditious libel in absentia and convicted in December 1792. Burke's later Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs (1791) carried on the argument with his own party.

Plot or Argument

• The occasion: Price's sermon and the Revolution of 1688

  Price's Discourse on the Love of Our Country claimed that 1688 had established a right to choose and remove rulers; Burke opens the Reflections by reading the Declaration of Right and the Act of Settlement to show that 1688 secured hereditary succession and the ancient constitution instead.

• Burke: inheritance, prescription, and prudent reform

  Burke presents English liberty as an inheritance entailed from forefathers, defends reform that conserves, and argues that political reasoning must work on circumstances and experience; government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants, and abstract rights cannot direct it.

• Burke: the partnership of generations and the moral order

  He describes the October Days and the queen at Versailles, mourns the passing of the age of chivalry, defends just prejudice, the established church, and property, and calls society a partnership between the living, the dead, and the unborn under the eternal law of God.

• Burke: the National Assembly and its prospects

  Burke criticizes the composition of the Assembly, the confiscation of church lands, the paper assignats, and the new departments, and predicts that the Revolution will end in the rule of a popular general.

• Paine, Part I: the rights of the living

  Paine denies that the Parliament of 1688 could bind its successors, argues from the unity of creation that all men are born equal in rights, distinguishes natural and civil rights, and insists that a constitution is a written act of the people antecedent to government.

• Paine, Part I: the Revolution retold

  He narrates the taking of the Bastille and the October Days to answer Burke's account, ridicules hereditary legislators, and reprints the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen with commentary.

• Paine, Part II: principle and practice

  Dedicated to Lafayette, Part II distinguishes society from government, contrasts the old hereditary systems with the new representative system of America and France, and closes with a detailed plan of public relief, pensions for the aged, payments for the schooling of poor children, and a graduated tax on large estates.

Lessons

• Inheritance or consent: what makes a government legitimate

  Burke held that a people's liberties and institutions are legitimate because they have been received, tested, and improved over generations; Paine held that only the consent of the living can make a government rightful. Each argument meets the other at the same point, the authority of the past over the present, and answers it oppositely.

  • What does Burke mean by calling English liberty an entailed inheritance?
  • Why does Paine say that the vanity of governing beyond the grave is a form of tyranny?
  • Do the decisions of earlier generations, such as a constitution, bind citizens who never consented to them, and if so, why?

• Abstract rights and practical wisdom

  Burke compared a debate about abstract rights to a debate about a man's abstract right to food or medicine, when the real question is how to obtain and administer them. Paine replied that without a clear principle of rights, every existing abuse can claim the sanction of precedent. The exchange is a classic case of reasoning from circumstances against reasoning from first principles.

  • How does Burke's analogy of food and medicine support his distrust of the French declarations?
  • Why does Paine think that appeals to precedent can never settle the question of rights?
  • Can a statesman act well with only principles, or only experience, or does he need both in some order?

• Reading a revolution while it is happening

  Burke wrote in 1790, before the king's flight, the Terror, or Napoleon, and predicted disorder ending in military rule; Paine wrote in 1791 and 1792 expecting the representative system to spread across Europe. Both arguments were tested by events neither had yet seen. The debate shows how much political judgment depends on forecasting the consequences of principles.

  • What did Burke predict about the future of the Revolution, and on what grounds?
  • How does Paine's retelling of the Bastille and the October Days change the reader's sense of those events?
  • Should the later course of the Revolution change how we judge either book's argument?

Context

The Estates-General met in May 1789, the Bastille fell on July 14, the National Assembly issued the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in August, and in October a crowd brought the royal family from Versailles to Paris. In Britain, where the centenary of 1688 had just been celebrated, Dissenters and reformers greeted these events as a continuation of their own revolution, while others feared them. Burke and Paine had known each other before 1789 through Paine's design for an iron bridge, and Paine wrote to Burke from Paris with enthusiasm for the Revolution in its early months.

Composition

Burke began the Reflections as a reply to Depont's request for his opinion and expanded it after reading Price's sermon; it was published in London on November 1, 1790. Paine wrote Part I of Rights of Man in London in the winter of 1790-1791 and dedicated it to George Washington; it appeared in March 1791. Part II, dedicated to Lafayette, followed in February 1792. This entry has no stored text of its own: its quotations are drawn only from the stored texts of the Reflections (Burke's Works, vol. 3, Nimmo edition) and of Paine's writings (Conway edition), which are the library's records reflections-on-the-revolution-in-france and common-sense-rights-of-man-and-other-writings.

Reception

The Reflections drew dozens of replies, among them Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790) and James Mackintosh's Vindiciae Gallicae (1791). Rights of Man was reprinted in cheap editions and read in reform societies across Britain; a royal proclamation against seditious writings followed in May 1792, and Paine, then in France, was convicted of seditious libel in absentia that December. Burke's Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs (1791) defended his position within the Whig party, which divided over the Revolution. The exchange has since been read as an early statement of the opposition between a politics of tradition and a politics of natural rights.

Comparisons

• reflections-on-the-revolution-in-france

  Burke's side of the debate in full, with the passages on inheritance, the queen at Versailles, prejudice, the church, and the partnership of generations that Paine attacked.

• common-sense-rights-of-man-and-other-writings

  Paine's side in full: Rights of Man Parts I and II, together with Common Sense, whose arguments against hereditary monarchy Paine carried from America to Britain.

• second-treatise-of-government

  Locke's account of consent and the dissolution of government stands behind both Price's reading of 1688 and Paine's argument, while Burke reads 1688 as a conservative restoration.

• the-social-contract

  Rousseau's general will and his claim that the people may change any law were part of the French intellectual background Burke distrusted and Paine's argument partly shared.

• a-tale-of-two-cities

  Dickens's novel of 1859 retells the fall of the Bastille and the Terror, the events Paine narrated hopefully and Burke foresaw with dread.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• This entry has no text of its own; read the opening pages of the Reflections and the opening of Rights of Man Part I side by side, since Paine answers Burke's reading of 1688 point by point.
• Burke's claim that English liberties are an inheritance, and Paine's reply that no generation can own the generations that follow.
• The two accounts of the October Days of 1789: Burke's scene of the queen at Versailles and Paine's retelling of the same events.
• Paine's insistence that a constitution must be a written document one can produce, and Burke's trust in an unwritten constitution formed by prescription.
• The plan of public relief at the end of Rights of Man Part II, which has no counterpart in Burke.

Key terms and names

Prescription

Burke's ground of title: rights and institutions justified by long, peaceable possession and the experience of generations rather than by an original contract.

Entailed inheritance

Burke's image, from property law, of liberties passed down a family line that no single holder may sell or destroy.

Natural and civil rights

Paine's distinction between rights a man has by his existence and the rights he holds as a member of society, which he says are natural rights exchanged for security.

Revolution Society

The London club commemorating 1688 to which Richard Price preached in November 1789, prompting Burke's reply.

Written constitution

For Paine, a document made by the people before and above the government; he argued that England had no constitution in this sense.

Prejudice

In Burke's usage, settled moral habits and opinions inherited from the past, which he defends as wisdom that makes virtue habitual.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension What did Richard Price claim about the Revolution of 1688, and how does Burke answer him?
2. Comprehension According to Paine, why can the Parliament of 1688 not bind later generations?
3. Interpretation Why does Burke compare a debate about abstract rights to a debate about the abstract right to food or medicine?
4. Interpretation How does Burke's description of society as a partnership of the living, the dead, and the unborn answer Paine's argument before Paine made it?
5. Interpretation Why is it important to Paine that a constitution be written and prior to the government?
6. Interpretation Burke writes with grief and ornament, Paine with plain sarcasm. How does each style serve its argument?
7. Big Question How much should the wisdom of the past limit what the present generation may change, and who decides when reform becomes revolution?

Faith Connections

• Jeremiah 6:16 (Scripture)

  Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way. Burke's case for walking in inherited ways, reforming them rather than abandoning them, echoes the prophet's counsel.

• Genesis 1:26-27 (Scripture)

  Paine appeals in Part I to the Mosaic account of creation to argue for the unity and equal rights of all men, taking that account, as he says, whether as divine authority or merely historical; Paine himself was a deist, and his later Age of Reason sets out that position.

• Richard Hooker, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity I.10 (Great Conversation)

  Hooker argued that laws made by a society's forebears still bind it because a society lives on in its successors and was alive in its predecessors, a view close to Burke's partnership of generations and opposite to Paine's.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: Burke: political rights are the practical advantages of civil society, secured by an inherited constitution tested by experience; abstract theories of right cannot guide prudent reform; therefore the French Assembly's attempt to rebuild society from first principles will end in disorder. Paine: all men are equal in natural rights by creation; each generation is free to act for itself and no earlier settlement can bind it; therefore legitimate government rests only on a constitution made by the living people, and hereditary government has no just claim.

Rhetorical device: analogy. Burke compares abstract rights to a man's abstract right to food or medicine, arguing that the real question is how to procure and administer them; Paine counters with the image of a dead generation trying to govern from beyond the grave.

Debate: Resolved: that Burke was right that a nation's inherited institutions should be reformed gradually rather than rebuilt from first principles.

Memory Work

it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.

Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself in all cases as the age and generations which preceded it. The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Burke and Paine both claim to defend the rights of Englishmen. Explain how each defines those rights and their source, using the Revolution of 1688 as the test case, and judge which account better explains the settlement of 1688 as it was understood at the time.

Comparison with Second Treatise of Government: Compare Locke's account of consent and the dissolution of government with Burke's and Paine's readings of 1688. Which of the two is the more faithful heir of Locke, and on what points does each depart from him?

Creative Prompts

• Classroom

  Hold a two-sided seminar: half the class prepares Burke's account of the Revolution of 1688 and the other half Paine's, each using only the passages its author wrote, and the class then identifies the single factual or moral claim on which they most disagree.

• Dialogue

  Write the conversation Burke and Paine might have had at Beaconsfield in 1788, before the Revolution, about whether a nation can improve its government without breaking with its past.

• Essay

  Burke calls society a partnership of the living, the dead, and the unborn; Paine says each generation must be free to act for itself. Explain each claim in its own setting and consider what each implies for how a constitution should be amended.

• Fiction

  Tell the story of a London shopkeeper in 1792 who buys a cheap copy of Rights of Man, reads it aloud to friends, and must decide what to do after the royal proclamation against seditious writings.

Further Reading

• The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left, Yuval Levin

• Burke, Paine, Godwin, and the Revolution Controversy, Marilyn Butler (ed.)

• The Great Melody: A Thematic Biography of Edmund Burke, Conor Cruise O'Brien

• Tom Paine: A Political Life, John Keane