Robbie Bruens Anixter/Age of Revolutions?

Paine and Burke: 2 of Britains Most Wanted

In their textual sparring over the French Revolution, Thomas Paine and Edmund Burke base their respective arguments on very different visions of what constitutes a natural and right social order. For Paine, the natural order is prescriptive. Men have natural rights and societies work in particular ways, but this natural order has been corrupted by such abominations as hereditary government and primogeniture. By affirming natural rights, freedom and equality, the French Revolution is in a sense restoring the natural order. For Burke, the natural order is descriptive. That is, the natural order can be observed by looking at the world as it is along with the recorded history of men and nations. By disrupting the social order and displacing the Ancien Rgime, the French Revolution is foolishly upending the natural order. While Paine argues that the French Revolution and comparable political changes move the world toward a more natural social order, Burke believes precisely the opposite: the French Revolution foolishly disturbs the social order to no end other than chaos. Most of Paine and Burkes disagreements can be traced back to this fundamental difference in perspective in understanding the natural order of the sociopolitical world. Paine makes the claim that the French Revolution is making changes that bring government more in line with the natural order of the world. By put[ting] the legislative before the executive, the law before the king, the new French

Constitution is following the the natural order of things, because laws must have existence before they can have execution.1 Paine leans heavily on enlightenment reason to bolster his argument and his political theory tends to following a rationalist logic. If a government does not follow natural logical progressions like one must establish a law before one can execute it, then that government does not represent the natural social order and should be replaced by one that does. Governments that deprive men of their natural rights are actually perverting the social order by not turning them properly into civil rights and civil order. For Paine, there are those governments which have arisen out of society and offer the natural balance of rights and order and those which have not but are instead a government of priestcraft or of conquerors.2 The latter forms are not based on a legitimate social compact and do not follow natural reason. Paine argues that the monarchical governments of the world were never established legitimately. Therefore just as criminals and thugs have no claim on a natural role in society, neither do the governments that Burke defends so adamantly. Paine believes that such governments originated in a way that is a total violation of every principle sacred and moral.3 Their air of natural legitimacy is a sham, as they have simply contrived to lose the name of Robber in that of Monarch and gave what at first was plunderthe foster name of revenue.4 Where Burke sees a usurpation of just and orderly traditional authority, Paine sees a removal of the original usurpers of a natural social order. Thomas Paine, Rights of Man. pg. 69 Ibid. 3 Paine, Pg. 168. 4 Paine, Pg. 168-169
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The general thrust of Burkes argument follows a rather circular, traditionalist pattern. For any given social, political or economic phenomena, Burke posits that the traditional way of doing things in England has been for the best. Burke believes that civil society is the offspring of convention, which means that convention must be its law.5 Thus the conventions of the present and past are what guide nations towards a wisely considered future. Paine and Price may have abstract theories about the social compact that establishes civil society, but Burke has a functioning and long-lasting example in the country of England. From the Magna Carta to the Declaration of Right, the English nation has upheld its liberties as an entailed inheritance derived to us from our forefathers.6 For Burke, the natural social order is a sacred trust passed down from generation to generation rather than something a nation can contrive out of whole cloth in a revolutionary fervor. If change is needed, the modification should be minor and implemented slowly. Again, England provides the exemplary case: when in the seventeenth century the English constitution faced serious strain, the nation regenerated the deficient parts of the old constitution through the parts which were not impaired, but certainly did not dissolve the whole fabric7 as Burke insists the French are doing with their own revolution. Perhaps Burkes most revealing argument appears when he discusses inequality. Burke defends the prevailing state of inequality not only as entirely natural but also virtually unchangeable in its basic structure. Those who attempt to Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France. Pg. 150 Burke, pg. 119. 7 Burke, pg. 106.
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level, Burke declares, never equalize, because through observation one can see that in all societiessome description must be uppermost.8 Again, while theorists like Paine expound about abstractions like equality, in the real world one can see that inequality is always a component of orderly countries. Burke believes this sort of social ordering is natural. The French revolutionaries only change and pervert the natural order of things through a usurpation on the prerogatives of nature.9 What Paine sees as a falsely naturalized legitimacy, Burke sees as the real deal. This is how things should be because this is how they have always been. Thomas Paine and Edmund Burke see the French Revolution in radically different ways because they understand the natural state of the world as profoundly divergent ideas. Paine argues that the present state of most of the worlds government is corrupt and unnatural. Thus, events like the French Revolution herald the arrival of a better and more natural social order. Burke feels that the present state of the world only exists as it does in a functioning way because it has been carefully protected by previous generations. Thus he feels that the present generation is charged to preserve it with no more than modifications on the margins. To radically alter its makeup as the French Revolution attempts to do is now only wrong but also utter folly.

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Burke pg. 138. Burke, pg. 138.