Paine
the Propagandist, and Burke the valuable political theorist?
The Age of Enlightenment was a self-conscious, idealistic
movement which did away with groundless superstitions, and espoused the value
of man’s faculty for rational thought[1].
It ended in the madness of the Terror in France during 1794. Men’s ‘reason’ was
hard to maintain when confronted by the senseless killing which started in
Paris, and with the Napoleonic wars, which engulfed Europe. Thomas Paine and
Edmund Burke were two popular political writers who wrote before the Terror
began. Both had strong views on the way Europe should react to the toppling of
the monarchy in France. However, although Paine commanded more attention at the
time, his ideas have been dismissed, whereas Burke is usually remembered as the
more important political writer. This essay goes part of the way to describing
why this state of affairs came about, and why Paine should be given more
recognition as a political theorist.
First of all, the ‘Burke-Paine debate’ is a misnomer
because there was never any dialogue between the two men. Burke published Reflections[2]
in England in 1790 and Paine responded with Rights
of Man[3]
which appeared in two parts, in November 1791 (England) and February 1792
(written in France).
Paine’s work broke every existing publishing record, and
may still hold that record[4].
Four or five hundred thousand copies of The
Rights of Man (1791) sold in one year in the UK and Ireland. Given that
literacy was not what it is today the figures are quite staggering. Burke sold
40,000 copies of his Reflections on the
French Revolution which came out at that same time, and was funded and
supported by the King. Reflections generated
around 50 responses, one of which was The
Rights of Man. In its turn The Rights
of Man caused a larger stir of approximately 500 responses. The ideas were
of interest to common men and officials alike. To put this in a local
perspective the readership “certainly included Arthur Phillip and the governors
that followed him” [5].
In relation to the potential he had to influence mass
opinion, he attracted little attention from the mainstream academic press. The
main reason for this is because he is considered a propagandist rather than a
bona fide political theorist. He was a propagandist by self-admission, but this
does not preclude his ideas from being of value. There are many reasons for his
absence in the political science field, this is one of them. Some of them stem
from Paine himself, and how he alienated himself towards the end of his life[6].
Recently, in the last twenty years, there has been a belated acknowledgement of
Paine’s legacy, but it has been slow in coming, and still has a long way to go.
Burke’s commentators were much kinder, and he is commonly
given as the next chapter of political thought after Hume. He did not sell as
well as Paine, but his progressive utilitarian views and his more complicated
language gave him credos with academics. Burke wrote for a more educated sector
of society, evident from the text itself[7],
which may have distinguished him from a ‘propagandist’. He also wrote for an
audience which was justified in reading his views after the French Revolution
went awry as he had predicted. His views are drawn upon by modern conservative
thinkers, which has a stalwart following in present day ‘Thatcherites’[8].
In opposition to the positive attention Burke has
received, Paine has mostly had two hundred years of negative press. Especially
harmful to his long-term reputation has been the exclusion from serious works
on political theory:
“A typical account from the
1930s devotes one paragraph of an 800 page study of the events of 1776 to
Paine, dismisses Common Sense as ‘a
useless study in monarchy’ and an ‘unpractical attempt to at laying down a
system of government’ and concludes only grudgingly ‘whatever Paine’s lack of
personal merit, it must be admitted he did a great service to his times’.”[9]
This suppression
started as soon as Paine was jailed in 1794. It took root quickly in America
(in England the book has been banned as soon as it was published and remained
so), which should have been Paine’s most popular market,
“It must have been painful to
the feelings of every honest man to think that the writing of Mr. Paine …
should have been so near a total extinction as to be found no where for sale,
but in clandestine manner and at an exorbitant price” (publisher’s preface to
the 1817 edition of a collected works)[10]
Paine’s biographers preface their books and articles by
the wrongs they must redress, even in the present day,
“The bicentenary of the
publication of Thomas Paine’s Right of
Man (1791-2) has come and gone, silently and obscurely. No new monuments to
Paine were unveiled (even the Post Office got into the spirit of things by
refusing to issue a commemorative stamp) and conservative historians continued
to poke at British radical traditions with evidence of ‘popular’ opposition to
Paine’s politics” [11]
Of course, to gain a place for Paine in the political
theory books, it is necessary to show that he contributed new ideas. His place
in the history books will eventually be secured by the uncontestable popularity
of his work, this does not necessarily
mean that he will stand side by side, on an intellectual level, with men such
as Hobbes and Locke. In the past Paine has been denied academic standing
because of the conception that he was solely a propagandist. He probably
considered himself as a ‘propagandist’, whose duty was to the men around him
rather than to posterity. He wrote towards a tangible political end, there is
no doubt. He issued cheap editions and re-invested his royalties in other
publications. Just because he appealed to working people does not lead to
a conclusion that he was a mere
‘propagandist’, or that he did not put forward anything of theoretical
significance.
The first negative blow may be dealt by calling Tom Paine
a ‘second-hand Locke’; that he was
repeating and paraphrasing Lockean theory. This is backed up by the fact that
Tom Paine said never read Locke[12],
“I never read Locke, … and by what I have heard of it from Horne
Tooke [a friend], I had no inducement to read it . It is a speculative, not a
practical work, and the style of it is heavy and tedious.”
Instead he was influenced by second-hand sources,
“It is impossible to identify
the influence which such men as Condorcet, Paine and Godwin mutually exerted
upon one another. But the evidence points to a significant intellectual
relationship among them, and to a common stock of ideas developing from Locke
and the English Revolution…”[13]
Locke, like Paine, recognised the value of “reason” or
“common sense” as opposed to blind faith. Locke said belief in God was not
founded in reason, but he said that reason was not incompatible with belief,
and that man should go ahead confident that empirical data would complement his
faith rather than destroy it. The 1700s was to see the rise of popular, useful
scientific culture, and Locke paved the way for scientists to work earnestly
without worrying about reconciling empirical and theological matters. He
created a convenient distance between God and the fields of scientific enquiry.
In turn, Paine would advocate the division of the church from the state when he
gave advice on the American constitution.
Locke still clung onto notions of ‘natural law’ and
self-evident truths, which were taken up by Paine, but denied by Burke[14].
“The same spark of the divine nature and knowledge
in man, which, making him a man, showed him the law he was under, as a man”.[15]
So Locke did not divorce himself from notions of the
‘divine’. Neither did Paine, although he did not use the word ‘divine’. He used
words like ‘self-evident’. Such words highlighted that although Paine and Locke
were progressive thinkers, they still refused to get rid of the safety valve which
guaranteed fundamental rights, even though they might prove unprofitable for
society . On the other hand, the utilitarian view, epitomised by Jeremy Bentham
described any attempt to justify natural rights as “nonsense on stilts”[16].
Rousseau, a natural sceptic, was the first to attack
natural law, albeit piecemeal,
“Rousseau attacked only one limited segment of the
system of natural law, the artificiality of seeing society merely as an agent
to secure individual goods … had Rousseau stood alone, the imposing system of
natural law elaborated in a century and a half of philosophical development,
would hardly have fallen…”[17]
Burke would draw very heavily on Rousseau’s development
of ‘social contract’ theory, and also on his negative stand on innate human rights.
Instrumental in bringing Rousseau’s sceptical ideas to fruition was David
Hume’s 1749 essay, Treatise of Human
Nature. He outlined three categories of knowledge: pure, (eg. The extrapolation of mathematical
axioms), empirical (eg. physics), and religious. The last two he said were
grounded in subjectivity. Hume’s ground breaking piece classified the last
category, faith in God and natural laws, as nothing but sentiment. Richard
Carlyle called the idea “a flat thrashing-floor for logic, whereon all questions,
from the doctrine of rent to the natural history of religion, are thrashed and
sifted with the same mechanical impartiality”[18].
Hume completed the theory of shredding concepts of the ‘divine’ in favour of
‘utility’[19]. Burke was
firmly in this utilitarian camp[20].
So it is incorrect to paint Paine as the radical and
Burke as the conservative. Historically they are so, but theoretically Burke
took a more ‘enlightened’ stance, drawing on Hume and Rousseau. But Burke also
refused to quote his sources, as Thomas Paine had done with Locke,
“I assure you I am not at singularity. I give you
opinions which have been accepted among us, from very early times up to his
moment , which a continued and general approbation, and which indeed are worked
into my mind that I am unable to distinguish what I have learned from others
from the results of my own meditation”.[21]
Which is a fancy way of saying he cannot be bothered
crediting men with the ideas he has put forward. Paine too, had an arrogant
streak in him,
“I
rarely quote; the reason is, I always think”
and boasted that he,
“neither read books, nor studied other people’s
opinions”[22]
This attitude is certainly no longer considered
admirable, but served a political purpose. Gwyn Williams said that “His
independence seemingly proved that the common man needed to political or
intellectual theories to comprehend and challenge relations of power”[23].
However Paine may have been lying when he said that he had never published
anything before Common Sense and that he never read books. Both these claims
should be eyed with suspicion. From lesser known pamphlets and letters there is
evidence that he was familiar with Locke, Montesquieu, Rousseau and Adam Smith [24].
To what extent he was versed in political theory is uncertain.
Burke was a good friend of Adam Smith[25],
and used the term ‘social contract’, straight from the texts of Hobbes, Locke
and Rousseau, who wrote a book on the subject. Burke was definitely an avid
reader of the classics, and interested in politics because of his place in
Parliament. Again, however it is impossible to nail down the specifics of his
political education.
Paine and Burke’s ‘debate’ was heated because of they
were arguing over the way the world should be shaped in a time when the future
seemed imminently malleable. Burke had supported the American revolution, and
he was a member of the Whig party (as opposed to the conservative party, the
Tories). Burke surprised Paine when he wrote Reflections, because Paine thought Burke was a reformist. Lord Acton
recognised Burke’s paradox:
“[Burke] not an entire liberal?
How thoroughly he wished for liberty – of conscience – property, trade,
slavery, etc. What stood against it? His notion of history. The claims of the
past. The authority of time. The will of the dead. Continuity.”[26]
Reflections seemed
out of place with Burke’s previous democratic sentiments. Maybe this is why the
first few pages of Rights of Man are
written in such a vehement tone, because Paine is chastising someone ‘who
should have known better’.
The battle between the two documents revolves around how
nations should respond to a their people when they want reform. Burke thought
the traditional system of government was greater than the will people who lived
under it, and Paine thought that all government’s power came from the
collective’s self-evident right to determine their future, and thus could
change it at any time. Burke saw government as a gradual progression through
the ages, safe-guarding virtue and scientific advancement. He thought change in
the system should come from above, organically, not in violent revolution. In Reflections there are strong arguments
that are still relevant to conservative politics in the modern age[27].
He adopted the ‘social contract’ theory, which was popular with political
theorists to justify keeping the status quo[28].
The populace and actual government of the day have a contract with the
established system of government. Neither should emphasise their contemporary
rights to topple the system. To change the structure of the community by
emphasising individual rights was to descend into “madness, discord, vice,
confusion and unavailing sorrow”[29].
This is similar to constitutional imperative Australia
that the population does not have the right to revolution, and that we should
pay reverence to our evolved political
systems that derived from the British system. Burke’s view is alive and well in
schools and in the community because it is founded in conservatism and results in
stability. If the Parliament were to put a prohibitive tax on food and people
were starving then men and women might not be so complacent. Burke never
outlined how the French should have
acted under the absolute corruption
of Louis XVI’s rule. He said rather cold-heartedly that revolution, even to
overthrow corruption, is not justifiable,
“[the necessity = revolution in dire
circumstances] This necessity is no exception to the rule [the rule of
continuity]; because this necessity itself is a part too of that moral and
physical disposition of things to which man must be obedient by consent or
force; but if that which is only submission to necessity should be made the
object of choice, the law is broken, nature is disobeyed, and the rebellious
are outlawed, cast forth, exiled, from this world of reason, and order, and
peace and virtue, and fruitful penitence into the antagonistic world of
madness…etc…”[30]
and more,
“he should approach to the
faults of the state as to the wounds of the father, with pious awe and
trembling solicitude”[31]
This was unrealistic and Paine was ruthless in his
counter-attack. He was a firm believe in natural rights, and the right to
overthrow an unjust government. Burke had seeming cut off the “escape hatch”
which theorists like Locke had always included – the right to resist if things
got unbearable. Paine detested Burke’s notion that living men could be ruled
over by the dead men who originally set up the system,
“There never did, nor never can
exist a parliament, or any description
of men, or any generation of men, in any country, possessed of the right or the
power of binding or controlling posterity to the ‘end of time’”[32]
Thomas Paine put this on grounds of natural rights,
“it is authority against authority all the way,
till we come to the divine origin of the rights of man, at the creation…
If a dispute about the rights of man
had arisen at the distance of an hundred years from the creation, it is to this
source of authority they must have referred, and it is to the same source of
authority that we must now refer.”[33]
He brought into play the notion of natural law, whereas
Burke, taking the more ‘conservative’ stance, had dispensed with it altogether.
Burke’s argument relied on Hume’s utilitarian justification, that a traditional
system was best because it served its people best.
Paine never saw utilitarianism as an over-riding
principle, but one which would always be put below the rights of individual
citizens. Both the US Declaration of
Independence 1776 and the more
thorough French equivalent, The Rights of
Man and The Citizen 1789, owe much to his thinking[34].
If we compare this to Hume’s utility principle, we can see that Paine has
lapsed into an less ‘enlightened’ stance, even though the practical effect of
his theories is more radical – to secure rights even when they are unprofitable
for society as a whole. Because of this, Burke and Bentham were considered the
natural successors in the anti-Lockean movement, rather than Paine, who was
anachronistic (in the area of rights). It is understandable that many authors[35]
chose the progression Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Burke, Bentham. Thomas Paine
interrupted the flow, and it was convenient to side-line him.
In many cases it is ignored that Burke sometimes lapsed
into horribly sentimental arguments, many of which did not make sense. Reflections is more emotional than Rights
of Man. For instance about Marie-Antoinette he wrote,
“I thought ten thousand men must have leaped from
their scabbards to avenge a even a look that threatened her with insult. – But
the age of chivalry is gone – that of sophisters, oeconomists, and calculators
have succeeded. etc…etc…” [36]
And so forth, glorifying the Queen of France for a full
page. Another piece that stands out is,
“The anodyne draught of oblivion, thus drugged, is well calculated to preserve
a galling wakefulness, and to feed the living ulcer of a corroding memory. Thus
to administer the opiate potion of amnesty, powdered with all the ingredients
of scorn and contempt, is to hold to his lips, instead of the ‘balm of hurt
minds’, the cup of human misery to the brim, and to force him to drink it to
the dregs.”
Burke is moved by the momentous upheaval of the French
Revolution, who felt its force as much as Paine. Both their works intended to
influence popular opinion. The only difference is that Paine used a simpler
language so that all men could understand him. The only sources he assumed his
audience had knowledge of was the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer[37].
He renounced an elitist approach and this reflected in his wider readership.
Paine used rhetoric but he used his old ruse of ‘common-sense’, a commoner’s
truth readily understandable to a fellow commoner[38].
Rights of Man used “rhetoric to hide
rhetoric”[39].
Apart from the high-flown language, Burke’s manuscript is
also jumbled, having no structure or shape[40].
Even more damning are his contradictory statements. He is passionate about
keeping the constitutional monarchy in England, but cannot help being the
progressive thinker who supported the American Revolution’s rejection of the monarchy.
This leads to unclear thought,
“There is something manic, even
schizoid, in Burke’s endless shifts of moods and positions. Just at the very
moment when one thinks one has located him, Burke slips away and reappears
somewhere else – the effect being that ‘where Burke is, you cannot be’, or that
game of ‘scissors, paper, stone’, where each discrete element either caps or is
capped by one of the others”. [41]
The same could not be said about Paine, whose Rights of Man is structured to deal with
Burke on a point-by-point basis. In fact Rights
of Man set readily understandable principles which were fitted in neatly
with each other. Its propaganda value was thus ensured.
Paine’s originality is a hard subject to discuss, because
as discussed above, he did not cite other’s opinions. Historians with must sort
out what is original by looking at the ideas and comparing them with previous
literature. John Keane has said that Paine’s divergences from old authority are
today “so obvious that their originality is often over-looked”[42].
Paine was the first man to look at how power
relationships at a national level affect the family as a basic unit of society[43],
“[Paine] emphasised how
despotic states foster the power of men over women and children within
households. Despotic states presuppose despotic households, in which the
arbitrary exercise of power fathers – who, for instance, bequeath property to
their firstborn sons – reinforces what Paine called ‘family tyranny and
injustice’”[44].
Today the catchword in feminist studies is ‘patriarchy’,
and Paine goes unrecognised. Also highly original is his link of despotic
governments to their penchant for war. Previous thinkers had regarded war as a
‘sad necessity’. Rights of Man was
the first to describe this relationship properly.[45]
Paine also advocated a system of welfare. Paine wanted to
reduce the role of government as much as possible, to make it ‘cheap,
efficient’, but saw that people needed security if there was to be ultimate
peace between citizens and nation states[46].
Paine regarded care of the elderly, widowed, single mothers, the unemployed,
“not of the nature of a charity, but of a right”[47].
He considered this the best policy, because citizens with rights to a certain
level of comfort would never choose to go to war, thus securing peace from the
bottom up[48] . This argument shows that Paine was a
utilitarian, but one who came at the problem from a different angle[49].
He came closer to Rousseau’s ideal state than anybody previously:
“a form of association which
will defend and protect with the whole common force the person and goods of
each associate and in which each, whilst uniting himself with all, may still
obey himself alone and be as free as before”[50].
The cutting question was put by a modern human-rights
advocate,
“Is it possible that the claims of human rights
may be incompatible with the good of social utility? … can the doctrine of
human rights be more coherently and plausibly formulated by the theory of
utilitarianism?”[51]
This question is absolutely crucial if human rights are
to be recognised by the international community. Paine had already alluded to a
compatible state where rights and utility would ultimately be the same thing –
the maximum utility would arise out of honouring people’s dignity as human beings.
Paine’s theory that there would be an absence of war in a
true democracy that safe-guarded its citizens’ welfare leads into Paine’s
internationalist ideas. Internationalism became unpopular during the War
(1796-1815) and afterwards with the rise of strong nationalistic movements in
the 19th century. Now that trend may be reversing. Ian Dyck sees the
European Union as greatly in debt to Paine, who was committed to free trade
between the countries in a capitalist system[52].
Furthermore it seems like the United Nations was also foreshadowed by Paine,
“Paine was certain that
democratic republican states, guided by civil societies held together by
reciprocal interests and mutual affection,
would make for a new global order free from the curse of war”[53]
Dyck says that the refusal of the EU to recognise Paine
is due to “fear that the enquiry will rattle some skeletons in our ideological
closets”[54]. This is
easy to see what these skeletons might be when one looks at Paine’s sweeping
idealism:
“The true idea of a great nation, is that which
extends and promotes the principles of a universal society, whose mind rises
above the atmosphere of local thoughts, and considers mankind, of whatever
nation or profession they may be, as the work of one Creator.”[55]
Paine’s world view is a bit too idealistic (communist?)
to be endorsed by New York or Brussels. In fact it is Burke who has seen a
renewed interest in his writings after the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the
rise of economic rationalism[56].
One commentator thinks this is because Burke can be used to justify a
wide-range of policies, but sees reference to him as an indictment of the
referee,
“Seeking support from Burke
today, is the very act of launching what seems to be a most thrusting
indictment of government policies: “To tell people that they are relieved by
the dilapidation of their public estate, is a cruel and insolent imposition”
[Burke] one trips over some under pronouncement equally supportive of those
policies: “To provide for us in our necessities is not the power of government
… The labouring people are poor because they are numerous’ [Burke]”[57]
It is clear that Paine should have his place in the books
as a bona fide political theorist alongside his contemporary, Burke. One of the
major problems is that there is not much political benefit in promoting Thomas
Paine, either from a left-wing, right-wing or a religious standpoint. He is
incompatible with all the major ideologies. Another is that he once he started
to be ignored, he tended to be ignored in the present out of deference to the
text-book writers of the past. That trend is being reversed slowly, but the
account has not yet been settled, and probably will not be settled for years to
come.