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The Role of America in the ‘Debate on France’ 1791–5: Thomas Paine's Insertion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 January 2009

Mark Philp
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Extract

It is a commonplace of British History that following the onset of the French Revolution and the publication of Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France a widespread debate on political principles took place. The ‘debate on France’—the trial of the French Revolution before the enlightened and independent tribunal of the English public, as James Mackintosh referred to it,—was, according to Alfred Cobban, ‘perhaps the last real discussion of the fundamentals of politics in this country’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Utilitas , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , November 1993 , pp. 221 - 237
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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References

1 Mackintosh, James, ‘Vindiciae Gallicae’, Miscellaneous Works ed. Mackintosh, R. J., 4 vols., London, 1846, iii. 164.Google Scholar

2 Cobban, Alfred, The Debate on the French Revolution, 1789–1800, London, 1950, p. 31.Google Scholar

3 Godwin, William, An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, London, 1793, p. 105Google Scholar, (see The Political and Philosophical Writings of William Godwin ed. Philp, M., 7 vols., London, 1993, iii. 63Google Scholar, and (Variants), iv. 56; Hume, David, Essays, Part 1, Essay iv, ‘Of the First Principles of Government’.Google Scholar

4 On the scale of the ‘debate’, in addition to Cobban, see Claeys, Gregory, ‘The French Revolution Debate’, History of Political Thought, xi (1990), 59–80Google Scholar; and Pendleton, Gayle Trusdel, ‘Towards a bibliography of the Reflections and the Rights of Man controversy’, Bulletin of Research in the Humanities, lxxxv (1982), 65–103.Google Scholar

5 This view of the 1790s has been advanced in Butler, Marilyn's introduction to her Burke, Paine, Godwin, and the Revolution Controversy, Cambridge, 1984Google Scholar and in my introduction to The French Revolution and British Popular Politics, Cambridge, 1992, pp. 1–17Google Scholar. See also my ‘Fragmented Ideology of Reform’ pp. 50–77Google Scholar, and Dinwiddy, John's contribution, ‘Interpretations of anti-jacobinism’, pp. 38–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 See, for example, Hobsbawm, Eric's comments in Echoes of the Marseillaises, London, 1990, p. 34.Google Scholar

7 Gerrald, Joseph, A Convention the only means of Saving us from ruin, London, 1792, 2nd edn. pp. 73–5.Google Scholar

8 See, Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, ed. Forbes, D., Cambridge, 1975, p. 169Google Scholar: ‘The example of North America is frequently cited as an objection to the proposition that it is impossible in our times for a large state to have a liberal constitution; for it supposedly proves that republican states are possible on a large scale. But this argument is inadmissable; North America cannot yet be regarded as a fully developed and mature state, but merely as one which is still in the process of becoming; it has not yet progressed far enough to feel the need for a monarchy. It is a federal state, but such states are in the worst possible situation as regards external relations. Its peculiar geographical situation has alone prevented this circumstance from bringing about its complete destruction.’

9 See for example, Price, Richard, Political Writings, ed. Thomas, D. O., Cambridge, 1991, especially pp. 76–100 and 116–51.Google Scholar

10 Toasts recorded on 14 July 1793 at a Society for Constitutional Information dinner to celebrate the fall of the Bastille, included, VI ‘The United States, May they prove an Asylum to all Oppressed Patriots’, and XII ‘4 July 1776’. Tom Paine's Jests, London, 1794Google Scholar. On the extent of the emigrations see Durey, Michael, ‘Thomas Paine's Apostles: Radical Emigres and the Triumph of Jeffersonian Republicanism,’ William and Mary Quarterly, xliv (1987), 661–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and ‘Transatlantic Patriotism: Political Exiles and America in the Age of Revolutions’, Artisans, Peasants and Proletarians, 1760–1860, ed. Walvin, James and Emsley, Clive, London, 1985.Google Scholar

11 Cited in Roe, N., Wordsworth and Coleridge: the Radical Years, Oxford, 1988, p. 114.Google Scholar

12 The Life and Major Writings of Thomas Paine, ed. Foner, P. S., 2 vols., Secaucus, N.J., 1949, i. 30–1.Google Scholar

13 Pigott, Charles, A Political Dictionary, London, 1795.Google Scholar

14 Sheps, Arthur, ‘The American Revolution and the Transformation of English Republicanism’, Historical Reflections, ii (1975), 3–28Google Scholar. Also, Wilson, David A., Paine and Cobbett: The Transatlantic Connection, Kingston/Montreal, 1988, ch. 3.Google Scholar

15 Rights of Man, ed. Foner, Eric, Harmondsworth, 1984, p. 49Google Scholar. On Lafayette see p. 46; on Franklin, p. 79Google Scholar. There is a claim that French soldiers involved in the revolutionary war were schooled in freedom and took the principles back with them to France (pp. 94–5), and there is a brief paragraph lauding America's ability to extend its government over a territory ten times the size of England, for a fortieth part of the expense, all without the need of a king. Finally, there are very brief references in the Preface and conclusion linking the French and American revolutions: pp. 35, 142–3, 147.

16 George Chalmers, Paine's first ‘biographer’, (writing under the pseudonym, Francis Oldys), substantially enlarged his discussion of Paine, 's writing after the publication of the Rights of Man: Part TwoGoogle Scholar, including a direct attack on the example of America.

17 Rights of Man, Part Two p. 159.Google Scholar

18 Ibid., p. 164.

19 See also Paine, T., Two Letters to Lord Onslow, London, 1792, p. 9Google Scholar: ‘The system of Government purely representative, unmixed of any thing of hereditary nonsense began in America.’

20 Rights of Man, Part Two p. 185.Google Scholar

21 See also his comments to this effect in his Letter Addressed to the Addressers, London, 1792.Google Scholar

22 Veitch, G. S., The Genesis of Parliamentary Reform, London, 1965Google Scholar reprint, ch. 12; Goodwin, Albert, The Friends of the People, London, 1979, chs. 7, 8 and 9Google Scholar; Parsinnen, T. M., ‘Association, convention and anti-Parliament in British radical politics, 1771–1848’, English Historical Review, lxxxviii (1973), 504–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Paine's most explicit argument for the creation of a British convention to discuss the reform of Parliament is in his Letter Addressed to the Addressers of the Late Proclamation, written in the summer of 1792; but the suggestion is certainly there in Rights of Man: Part Two, ch. 4 and again in the concluding pages of ch. 5.

23 Pocock, J. G. A., Virtue, Commerce and History, Cambridge, 1985, p. 276CrossRefGoogle Scholar—although Pocock's comment refers to Paine, the point holds good for individual works. See also Philp, M., Paine, Oxford, 1989, chs. 2 and 3.Google Scholar

24 One notable exception to this is the anonymous A Defence of the Constitution of England, London and also Dublin, 1791Google Scholar, in which American subversion is clearly recognized: ‘Since the conclusion of the American War, a leaven of sedition has been in fermentation in all Europe, and particularly in England and France’ (p. 1). Paine is described as an American Crimp ‘the honourable employment of which is to steal inventions, and decoy artists from Europe to America on plausible and false pretences’. Franklin was the first to fill this office, which amounts to that of conduit for a lateeighteenth-century brain drain (p. 2). See also pp. 7, 9, 24–6 and 35.

25 That said, it is possible that Paine was also responding to Burke who, in his Speech on the Quebec Government Bill, 6 05 1791Google Scholar, (Parliamentary History, xxix. 365–6)Google Scholar sought to deny that the American experience was of any relevance to either France or Britain—suggesting that ‘they (the Americans) formed their government as nearly as they could, according to the model of the British Constitution’. Paine refers to the speech in ch. 4, Rights of Man: Part Two, ed. E. Foner, pp. 194–5.Google Scholar

26 An Answer to the second part of the Rights of Man in two letters, London, 1792, pp. 5, 15, 23.Google Scholar

27 Playfair, William, Inevitable Consequences of Reform in Parliament, London, 1792, pp. 16–17.Google Scholar

28 See also Constitutional Letters in answer to Mr Paine's Rights of Man, London, 1792, pp. 24–5Google Scholar, which treats America as an exception because it was a colonial revolt, and France as an exception because it is a revolt against a despotism—neither of which cases apply to England.

29 E.g., Letter to a friend in the country wherein Mr Paine's Letter to Mr Dundas is particularly considered, London, 1792, pp. 16–17.Google Scholar

30 Mackenzie, H., An Answer to Paine's Rights of Man, to which is added a letter from P. Porcupine, Philadelphia, 1796, p. 64.Google Scholar

31 The Interests of Man: in opposition to the Rights of Man, or an Inquiry, Edinburgh and London, 1793, p. 48 (see also p. 46).Google Scholar

32 de Tocqueville, Alexis, Democracy in America, (1840), Volume 2, Book 2, ch. 20Google Scholar, ‘How an aristocracy may be created by manufactures’. See above note 8.

33 Principles of Order and Happiness under the British Constitution in a dialogue between a parish clerk and the 'squire, London, 1792, p. 8.Google Scholar

34 Bowles, J., A Protest Against Tom Paine's Rights of Man, Canterbury, 1793, p. 20Google Scholar (see also p. 11); also Dialogues on the Rights of Britons, between a Farmer, a Sailor, and a Manufacturer, London, 1792, Pt. I p. 10; Pt. III p. 14.Google Scholar

35 Horsley, , Speech in the House of Lords, Parliamentary History, xxxi. 1263.Google Scholar

36 Lewelyn, William, An Appeal to Men against Paine's Rights of Man in two parts, Leominster, 1793, p. 124.Google Scholar

37 This suggests that Gary Kates's view, that the radicalism of Part Two was a direct and detailed response to events in France, is a rather narrow reading of the text. See Kates, G., ‘From Liberalism to Radicalism: Tom Paine's Rights of Man’ Journal of the History of Ideas, 1 (1989), 569–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38 Greg Claeys has discussed some aspects of these developments in his paper to the Anglo—American Conference, held at the Institute of Historical Research, London, in July 1992.

39 See, e.g. Durey, , ‘Thomas Paine's Apostles’, 674–6Google Scholar, for an excellent analysis of this phenomenon.

40 Cited in Kramnick, I., Republicanism and Bourgeois Radicalism, Ithaca, 1990, p. 160.Google Scholar