Compatible Revolutions

The two 18th Century Revolutions shared a common thread in that they were both rooted in Enlightenment principals and tied together through the high politics of their age, yet while the American and French Revolutions shared many factors in principal, the vast intuitional differences between the two countries played a key role in the formation on the one hand, and constant failure on the other, of their respective governments after the overthrow of their former ruling regimes. In addition to sharing ideological roots in Enlightenment thought, influential personalities from the American Revolution were to play pivotal roles in the French Revolution that followed. Among these were American Founding Fathers Thomas Jefferson and Gouvernor Morris, and Englishmen Thomas Paine and Edmund Burke. These four men played pivotal and influential roles in the debates that swirled around the early years of the French Revolution, serving as both provocateurs and critics in two of the worlds most powerful and compelling epochs.

Comparing these two states is a Herculean intellectual exercise that Patrice Higonnet tackles with concise and thorough authority in her 1988 book titled Sister Republics by stating that “at the heart of the difference between the two popular political cultures (American Revolutionaries and the sansculottes) was the American crowd’s perception of itself as an agent of society taken as a whole, rather than as a representation of only one of its constituent parts”.[1] This observation serves as the cornerstone of the differences between the arguments that each country had in establishing a new form of government to replace the old. The fact that the Americans were more or less unified as a people aided in the debates of the Philadelphia Convention in 1787, providing cover for the American Founding Fathers as they were more or less on the same page in their desire for some form of republican government as “the war for American independence was not fought in an institutional void as was the French Revolution… in France, a collapsing Old Regime pulled down with it an ancient and fragile web of social and political institutions. In America, the effect of revolution was to strengthen local institutional forms”.[2] This is important to note due to the fact that the Americans were already used to a modicum of self rule. This serves as the fundamental difference in the natures of the two countries and their respective struggles for liberty. America, having established a sense of self determination from its advent, was in a better position to establish a republic than was the former absolutist state of France.

This fact did not deter Thomas Jefferson, who as ambassador to France remarked in a letter to Abigail Adams upon hearing of the prospect of convocation of the Estates General “I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the Atmosphere”.[3] Even though he agreed in principal with Louis XVI’s decision to seek the opinion of his subjects on the increasingly desperate straits of the French state, Jefferson showed a bit of pragmatic hesitancy in his confidence in the abilities of the French to act in a serious manner after being so long under the yoke of an absolutist state, continuing to write that “this occasion, more than any thing I have seen, convinces me that this nation is incapable of any serious effort but under the word of command”.[4] Further worried that the French were not capable of making the transition to democracy, Jefferson was hopeful that reason would prevail due to the fact that “when a measure so capable of doing good as the calling the Notables is treated with so much ridicule, we may conclude the nation desperate, and in charity pray that heaven may send them good kings”.[5] In the end, Jefferson’s wish for a strong king was to prove laughable as events unfolded once the Estates General was actually convened.

The intuitional foundations of these two countries could not have been more different. America, being a former colonial economic producer in addition to serving as a site of refuge for those looking to form a new society was in a much better position than France, which was still very much under the thumb of an absolutist, semi-feudal state. In addition, “the absence of a corporatist social past was another important factor which made impossible in America a leftist kind of dérapage, slipping toward either a Universalist ideology or popular class consciousness. The structures of American social life had for more than a century been individualistic to a remarkable extent”.[6] This fact cannot be repeated enough, for it lies at the heart of every comparison that is to be made between the two states and their peoples, especially among their urban denizens. Indeed, “at the formative moment of American politics, in the years when the traditions of the American Republic took shape, urban crowds existed, but only to uphold a Radical Whig ideology that was not particular to themselves. This ideology, unlike Jacobinism, placed inalienable individual rights at the center of the new politics”.[7] Already somewhat entitled due to the greater liberty afforded to English subjects, Americans were taking what amounted to civic baby steps compares to the giant leaps that their French counterparts were to take after them.

Even as he was aiding La Fayette with the drafting of the Declaration of the Rights of Man, Jefferson’s pragmatism showed through, as he noted in a letter to Comte Diodati that

so strongly fortified was the despotism of this government by long possession, by the respect & the fears of the people, by possessing the public force, by the imposing authority of forms and of haste, that had it held itself on the defensive only, the national assembly with all their good sense, would probably have only obtained a considerable improvement of the government, not a total revision of it.[8]

Yet the man that first enshrined the lofty ideals of the Enlightenment in a truly revolutionary capacity could not help but get excited at the prospect of what could be, claiming that “The National Assembly have now as clean a canvas to work on here as we had in America. Such has been the firmness and wisdom of their proceedings in moments of adversity as well as prosperity, that I have the highest confidence that they will use their power justly”.[9] Assuming that the National Assembly would follow in the footsteps of his countrymen in drafting a new constitution and forming a new government, Jefferson gushed with optimism, concluding

I have so much confidence on the good sense of man, and his qualifications for self-government, that I am never afraid of the issue where reason is left free to exert her force; and I will agree to be stoned as a false prophet if all does not end well in this country. Nor will it end with this country. Hers is but the first chapter of the history of European liberty.[10]

In the following years, Jefferson would sadly relieve himself of this sentiment as he watched the promise of this new era degenerate first into the Terror and then into the violent reign of Napoleon.

Completely lacking in Jefferson’s jubilant optimism, Edmund Burke, a member of the British House of Commons and supporter of the cause of American liberty, had no illusions about the path that the French Revolution was taking. In his scathing indictment of the French revolutionaries titled Reflections on the Revolution in France, Burke wrote that in choosing to eradicate the Old Regime and in its stead build a new government from scratch, the French were bound to meet disaster. This is a realistic position in light of how he and his fellow members of Parliament felt about their own Revolution in the century prior in which “the very idea of the fabrication of a new government is enough to fill us with disgust and horror. We wished at the period of the Revolution, and do now wish, to derive all we possess as an inheritance from our forefathers”.[11] Burke felt strongly that the French were making fatally disastrous decisions by completely discarding their existing state apparatus in their quest for a new government, decrying their revolutionary activities by writing that “you had all these advantages in your ancient states; but you chose to act as if you had never been molded into civil society, and had to begin everything anew. You began ill, because you began by despising everything that belonged to you”.[12] The failure of the French revolutionaries to slowly and deliberately reform the state system that had existed prior to the Revolution and establish a democratic tradition where none had existed before shattered the promise of the reforms that the monarchy had been willing to make, lamenting further that “you would have rendered the cause of liberty venerable in the eyes of every worthy mind in every nation. You would have shamed despotism from the earth, by shewing that freedom was not only reconcilable, but as, when well disciplined it is, auxiliary to law”.[13] Instead, Burke charged that through its hasty actions “France has bought poverty by crime! France has not sacrifices her virtue to her interest; but she has abandoned her interest, that she might prostitute her virtue”.[14] This was a very grave charge coming from one who had spoken against the interests of his own country during the American Revolution.

At many points in his criticism, Burke had an almost prophetic foresight into the fall of the monarchy. Writing about the character of the maligned Louis XVI, Burke stated that Louis XVI, while incompetent, was a good king that was willing to bring his subjects liberty, albeit at a much slower pace than the people thought necessary.[15] Yet Burke had no illusions about the right of a people to usurp a tyrant, conceding that “The punishment of real tyrants is a noble and awful act of justice; and it has with truth been said to be consolatory to the human mind”.[16] However, he was aghast at the French and their denigration of Louis XVI, contemptuously writing that “to degrade and insult a man as the worst of criminals and afterwards to trust him in your highest concerns as a faithful, honest, and zealous servant is not consistent to reasoning, nor prudent in policy, nor safe in practice”.[17] To Burke, this double standard was beyond reproach, and stands as one of the worst hypocrisies of the Revolution up to that point.

Thomas Paine, the brilliant and passionate propagandist who had made a name for himself as a pamphleteer during the American Revolution and had since moved to France, took issue bordering on personal offense with Burkes pamphlet, responding with a rebuttal pamphlet titled The Rights of Man in which he claimed that

it was not against Louis XVI 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 stables of parasites and plunderers too abominably filthy to be cleansed by anything short of a complete and universal Revolution. When it becomes necessary to do anything, the whole heart and soul should go into the measure, or not attempt it.[18]

This opening salvo is representative of the tone of most of this seminal work, and serves as a repudiation of the pessimistic betrayal that he felt was at the core of Burke’s criticism. Yet once again Burke was to be proven correct in his assessment for “in the fall of 1791 the revolutionary elite, led by the Gironde, had set off on a very dangerous course of consciously desired political and ideological radicalization. Once launched, the drift to the left was hard to arrest”.[19] This radical shift was to morph into the Terror in the coming years, exacerbated by the fact that “violent at the bottom, schizophrenic or at least incoherent at the top, French revolutionary politics, forever wavering, contrasted strikingly with the politics of revolutionary America, where the dérapage of institutions and opinions had been easily contained”,[20] a point that Burk had also made time and time again.

Burke venerated the very concept of government and its duty to provide for the welfare and long term stability of the state. This is because he felt strongly that at its very core that “government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. Men have a right that these wants should be provided for by this wisdom. Among these wants is to be reckoned the want, out of civil society, of a sufficient restraint upon their passions”.[21] This restraint was at the center of the United States Constitution, a document that he approved of due to the fact that it built upon the English system. This is evident in his assurance that

the science of government being therefore so practical in itself and intended for such practical purposes — a matter which requires experience, and even more experience than any person can gain in his whole life, however sagacious and observing he may be — it is with infinite caution that any man ought to venture upon pulling down an edifice which has answered in any tolerable degree for ages the common purposes of society, or on building it up again without having models and patterns of approved utility before his eyes.[22]

In failing to realize this, Burke felt that the French were traveling at breakneck speed toward disaster, warning that “in France, you are now in the crisis of a revolution and in the transit from one form of government to another — you cannot see that character of men exactly in the same situation in which we see it in this country. With us it is militant; with you it is triumphant; and you know how it can act when its power is commensurate to its will”.[23] It was this triumphantalism at the core of the French Revolution that bothered him the most, for the failure to rationally and pragmatically approach the formation of their state would inevitably lead to disaster. Paine, with the zeal of a true believer, repudiated Burke’s pessimism, retorting that

that which a whole nation chooses to do it has a right to do. Mr. Burke says, No. Where, then, does the right exist? I am contending for the rights of the living, and against their being willed away and controlled and contracted for by the manuscript assumed authority of the dead, and Mr. Burke is contending for the authority of the dead over the rights and freedom of the living.[24]

With this, Paine scoffed at the concept at the heart of Burke’s argument; the idea that government is an inherited gift and that it is the responsibility of the governed to nurture that with which they had been bestowed.

In order to further refute this concept of inherited responsibility, Paine argued that “to possess ourselves of a clear idea of what government is, or ought to be, we must trace it to its origin. In doing this we shall easily discover that governments must have arisen either out of the people or over the people. Mr. Burke has made no distinction. He investigates nothing to its source, and therefore he confounds everything”.[25] Finally, extolling the virtue of the absolute right of man to govern himself as he saw fit, Paine insisted that

a constitution is not a thing in name only, but in fact. It has not an ideal, but a real existence; and wherever it cannot be produced in a visible form, there is none. A constitution is a thing antecedent to a government, and a government is only the creature of a constitution. The constitution of a country is not the act of its government, but of the people constituting its government.[26]

This radical statement completely repudiated the very idea of reforming the French system that had existed before the Revolution, claiming instead that Man had a right to form whichever government he saw fit in order to better his situation. In theory, this is a seductive idea. In practice however, the messy reality is that reforming a government out of whole cloth is next to impossible in the best of situations, let alone a time as turbulent as the French Revolution.

Yet Burke defiantly had a point in his criticisms of the French Revolution due to the experiences of the Americans in their struggle for self rule. However, the American political situation was more conducive to forming a republic because they were already used to dealing with a parliamentary system, albeit that the Americans had no direct representation in London. Nevertheless, the fact remained that

before the 1770’s, in the prewar Radical Whig scheme of things, the power of Parliament was not feared because it protected an oppressed people from an oppressive monarch. The separation of powers, which the Whigs ordinarily acclaimed, was thought to guarantee the power of the legislature, representing the people as a whole, against the monarchic executive.[27]

The Americans were better able to form a state that was representative of the interests of its people. By building upon the British model, the Americans took it one step further by refusing to establish a monarchy, opting instead for a republic with three distinct and separate branches. Due to this,

the separation of powers was much praised; and it was guaranteed by an intricate system of checks and balances which paradoxically allowed each branch of government to poach on the territory of its neighbors—a system that differed diametrically from the pattern of revolutionary republicanism in France, where in 1793—94 a single committee, more or less empowered by a dazed national Convention, monopolized all types of judicial and legislative prerogatives, including the power of execution”.[28]

This is made all the more tragic due to the fact that one of the key delegates to the Philadelphia Convention was present in Paris at the time of the drafting of the Constitution of 1791, and actually advised both members of the Constituent Assembly and the king himself on matters pertaining to the complicated nuance involved in drafting such a document.

During the debates in Philadelphia over the drafting of the United States Constitution in 1787, Gouvernor Morris served as an eloquent advocate for the Federalist cause. Melanie Randolph Miller write in her 2005 book titled Envoy to the Terror that

[Morris] had a remarkably sophisticated grasp of the functions of checks and balances and this understanding was central to his suggestions for designing a successful republic. Specifically, to assure civil liberty and then, secondarily, political liberty—the principal goals for which the colonies had gone to war—Morris believed it was necessary to temper the influence of the popular will, to keep the executive independent of the legislature, and to assure the cooperation of the rich. He therefore advocated a bicameral legislature, with one house popularly elected and the other, consisting of the wealthy, appointed for life by the executive.[29]

Morris also lobbied for the establishment of the presidency, as “a strong executive was always central to Morris’s philosophy, and he had considerable impact on the design of the presidency, including terms, power to appoint Supreme Court justices, and the veto with the three-quarters override.[30] It is due to this that Morris was invaluable in the advice that he gave to both his old comrade La Fayette and to Louis XVI. However, he was constantly frustrated by the French and their inability to see the value of his council.

The Constitution of 1791 was fatally flawed due to its lack of either a strong executive or a bicameral legislature. This contributed greatly to the fact that “the social and parliamentary program of elitist and constitutional monarchy fell apart… the complicated marriage of monarchistic traditionalism and bourgeois, universalistic meritocracy did not succeed; and in retrospect, it is tempting to conclude that it bore the seeds of its own destruction”.[31] This was of course further exacerbated by the fact that “unlike the American Constitution of 1787 with its prudent checks and balances and its recognition of divergent interests, the French Constitution of 1791 was monocameral and holistic”.[32] This was not lost upon the perceptive Morris, who upon the drafting of the fatally flawed document leapt at the chance to lend his expertise to the King when he was approached by the Comte de Montmorin.

Seeing an opportunity to address the flaws in the Constitution of 1791, Morris “wrote a proposed speech for the king to give in accepting the constitution, an action with serious repercussions for Morris. He had never been coy about his opinion, telling William Short he considered the constitution ridiculous”.[33] Morris thought that by writing into the speech proposals for changes to the Constitution he could both strengthen the position of the King and the government that it was to form. In order to do this he “analyzed the constitution and its defects, noting that the declaration of rights was inconsistent with many of the provisions of the constitution itself, and pinpointing the lack of checks and balances needed to keep the Assembly from arrogating absolute power to itself”.[34] This pragmatic ploy was necessary, as Morris felt that the King “should accept the constitution, but predict specific problems that it would produce, so that when those difficulties arose his insight would be acknowledged”.[35] Unfortunately, the king failed to heed Morris’s advice, which in the end probably contributed greatly to the constitutional disaster that he had previously warned about.

In the wake of the growing radicalism of 1790, Morris had written to President Washington that was dire in its predictions. Lamenting that

the country I now inhabit, on which so many other countries depend, having sunk to absolute nothingness, has deranged the general state of things in every quarter; and what complicates the scene in no small degree is the incertitude which prevails, as to her future fate, because a new system, calculated on the palsied state of France, would be as effectually deranged by her recovery, as that was which leaned upon her greatness heretofore and fell in her fall.[36]

Especially concerned with the gathering war clouds to the east, especially in regards to the Baltic region, which was “a granary for southern Europe”,[37] he further warned that the Austrian and Prussian armies were disengaging from their entanglements with the Ottomans and maneuvering towards France. Yet Morris was not confident in his assessment of the French ability to stave off war, writing that

The sovereign, humbled to the level of a beggar's pity, without resources, without authority, without a friend. The Assembly at once a master and a slave, new in power, wild in theory, raw in practice. It engrosses all functions though incapable of exercising any, and has taken from this fierce ferocious people every restraint of religion and of respect… such a state of things cannot last.[38]

This assessment, while wholly pessimistic, yet would prove to be right on the mark, and was all the more poignant considering the lengths he would go to in order to aid Louis XVI.

Nevertheless, Morris was convinced that “one thing only seems to be tolerably ascertained, that the glorious opportunity is lost, and (for this time at least) the revolution has failed”.[39] Morris was aware that his opinion was in the minority, and he made sure to point that out to Washington in writing that

the object of this letter is, as you will observe, to communicate as nearly as I can that state of things, which may in a greater or smaller degree be forced upon your attention. I must add the conviction, that my letters present very different prospects from those, which may reach you through other channels. You, who know mankind thoroughly, will be able to form a solid opinion; and however that may vary from mine, I shall still rejoice if even by the display of false ideas, I shall have cast any additional light upon those which are true.[40]

The candor with which Morris wrote in this and other letters, along with his experiences in the American Revolution and as a delegate to the Philadelphia Convention were instrumental in Washington’s later decision to appoint Morris to the position of the United States Ambassador to France in the waning days of 1791. Morris, being both brutally honest and keenly perceptive was vilified for his involvement with Louis XVI, yet in the end, history would forgive Morris his transgressions, although it would generally do its best to forget the inconvenient truths that this man held up for all to see.

Of the two 18^th Century revolutions, the French Revolution is commonly held up to be the one that resonates the most into the modern world. In the 19^th Century, Marx would use the French Revolution as a template for his socialist theories. In the 20^th Century, revolutionaries such as Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Guevara would all take cues from the uprising of the oppressed and the violent purges and terrorist tactics that they felt were an integral component to revolutionary activity. However, it is the American Revolution that has provided the world with its oldest democracy, as the United States has been able to soldier on for over 225 years with only one major civil catastrophe, the Civil War. However, the gusto with which the French revolutionaries attacked the systemic injustices of their world does and should serve as an example for all that Liberty and Equality are noble pursuits indeed, and that there should be no barriers to humankinds oftentimes desperate struggle for these lofty goals.

---

[1] Higonnet, Patrice. Sister Republics. Harvard University Press, Cambridge Massachusetts. 1988. Pg. 186.

[2] Higonnet. Sister Republics. Pg 188.

[3] Jefferson, Thomas. “A Little Rebellion Now and Then”. Letter to Abigail Adams, 2-22-1787. Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library. URL: http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=JefLett.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=55&division=div1

[4] Jefferson. “A Little Rebellion Now and Then”. 2-22-1787

[5] Ibid.

[6] Higonnet. Sister Republics. Pg 191.

[7] Ibid. Pg 191.

[8] Jefferson, Thomas. “The First Chapter… Of European Liberty”. Letter to the Comte Diodati, 8-3-1789. Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library. URL: http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=JefLett.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=80&division=div1

[9] Jefferson. “The First Chapter… Of European Liberty”. 8-3-1789.

[10] Jefferson. “The First Chapter… Of European Liberty”. 8-3-1789

[11] Burke, Edmund. Reflections on the Revolution in France. Oxford University Press, Oxford, England. 1790. Pg 31.

[12] Burke. Reflections on the Revolution in France. Pg 36.

[13] Burke. Reflections on the Revolution in France. Pg 37.

[14] Ibid. Pg 37.

[15] Ibid. Pg 82.

[16] Ibid. Pg 83.

[17] Burke. Reflections on the Revolution in France. Pg 83.

[18] Paine, Thomas. Common Sense, The Rights of Man, and Other Essential Writings of Thomas Paine. Signet Classic, New York. 2003. Pg 144.

[19] Higonnet. Sister Republics. Pg 247.

[20] Higonnet. Sister Republics. Pg 250.

[21] Burke. Reflections on the Revolution in France. Pg 60.

[22] Ibid. Pg 61.

[23] Ibid. Pg 64.

[24] Paine. Common Sense, The Rights of Man, and Other Essential Writings of Thomas Paine. Pg 139.

[25] Ibid. Pg 172.

[26] Ibid. Pg 173.

[27] Higonnet. Sister Republics. Pg 196.

[28] Ibid. Pg 196.

[29] Miller, Melanie Randolph. Envoy to the Terror. Potomac Books, Inc. Dulles, Virginia. 2005. Pg 7.

[30] Miller. Envoy to the Terror. Pg 8.

[31] Higonnet. Sister Republics. Pg 226.

[32] Ibid. Pg 227.

[33] Miller. Envoy to the Terror. Pg 86.

[34] Ibid. Pg 87.

[35] Ibid. Pg 87.

[36] Morris, Gouvernor. “Letter to George Washington”. 11-22-1790. Familytales.org. URL: http://www.familytales.org/dbDisplay.php?id=ltr_gom4589&person=gom

[37] Morris, Gouvernor. “Letter to George Washington”. 11-22-1790

[38] Ibid. 11-22-1790

[39] Morris, Gouvernor. “Letter to George Washington”. 11-22-1790

[40] Ibid. 11-22-1790