Part I, 1

Among the affronts by which nations or individuals provoke and anger one another, Mr. Burke's pamphlet on the French Revolution is extraordinary. Neither the people of France nor the National Assembly were concerning themselves with England's affairs or its Parliament. That Mr. Burke should launch an unprovoked attack on them, both in Parliament and in public, is conduct that manners cannot excuse and policy cannot justify.

Hardly an abusive epithet in the English language has been spared the French nation and the National Assembly by Mr. Burke. Whatever malice, prejudice, ignorance, or knowledge could suggest is poured out in the profuse fury of nearly four hundred pages. Writing in that manner and on that plan, Mr. Burke could have filled as many thousands. When tongue or pen is unleashed in a frenzy of passion, it is the man, not the subject, that gives out.

So far Mr. Burke has been mistaken and disappointed in his views of French affairs. Yet the ingenuity of his hope, or the malice of his despair, supplies fresh pretexts to continue. Once he could not be made to believe a revolution in France was possible. He thought the French had neither the spirit to begin one nor the courage to sustain it; now that a revolution has come, he finds his escape in condemning it.

Not content with abusing the National Assembly, he devotes much of his book to abusing Dr. Price (one of the kindest-hearted men alive) and the two English organizations called the Revolution Society and the Society for Constitutional Information.

Dr. Price preached a sermon on the 4th of November, 1789, the anniversary of what is called the Revolution in England, which took place in 1688. Speaking of this sermon, Mr. Burke says: "The political Divine proceeds dogmatically to assert, that by the principles of the Revolution, the people of England have acquired three fundamental rights:

1 To choose our own governors.

2 To cashier them for misconduct.

3 To frame a government for ourselves."

Dr. Price does not say the right to do these things belongs to this or that person, or this or that class of people, but to the whole: the right resides in the nation. Mr. Burke, on the contrary, denies that the right exists in the nation, as a whole or in any part, or anywhere at all. Stranger still, he says "that the people of England utterly disclaim such a right, and that they will resist the practical assertion of it with their lives and fortunes." That men should take up arms and spend their lives and fortunes not to defend their rights but to maintain that they have none is an entirely new discovery, suited to Mr. Burke's paradoxical genius.

Mr. Burke's way of proving that the English people have no such rights, and that they exist nowhere in the nation now, in whole or in part, is as marvelous and monstrous as what he has already said. His argument is that the people, or the generation, who had them are dead, and the right has died with them. For proof he cites a declaration Parliament made about a hundred years ago to William and Mary: "The Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, do, in the name of the people aforesaid" (that is, the English people then alive) "most humbly and faithfully submit themselves, their heirs and posterities, for Ever." He cites a clause in another Act of Parliament from the same reign, whose terms, he says, "bind us" (the people of their own day), "our heirs and our posterity, to them, their heirs and posterity, to the end of time."

Mr. Burke thinks those clauses sufficiently prove his case, and insists that they exclude the nation's right forever. Still not satisfied with making such declarations again and again, he goes further: "that if the people of England possessed such a right before the Revolution" (as he acknowledges they once did, not only in England but throughout Europe), "yet that the English Nation did, at the time of the Revolution, most solemnly renounce and abdicate it, for themselves, and for all their posterity, for ever."

Since Mr. Burke sometimes applies the poison of his appalling principles not only to the English nation but to the French Revolution and the National Assembly, calling that august, enlightened, and enlightening body of men usurpers, I shall, without ceremony, set another system of principles against his.

The English Parliament of 1688 took a certain action that it had a right to take on behalf of itself and its constituents, and that appeared right to take. But besides the right it held by delegation, it claimed another without warrant: the right to bind and govern posterity to the end of time. The case therefore has two parts: its delegated right and its assumed right. The first I concede. As for the second, my answer is this: there never has been, never will be, and never can be a Parliament, any body of men, or any generation, in any country, with the right or power to bind and govern posterity to the "end of time," or to command forever how the world shall be governed or who shall govern it. All clauses, acts, and declarations by which their makers attempt what they have neither the right nor the power to do, nor the power to enforce, are therefore null and void in themselves. Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself in every case as the ages and generations before it. The vanity and presumption of ruling from beyond the grave are the most ridiculous and insolent of tyrannies. No man owns another man; nor does any generation own the generations that follow. The Parliament or people of 1688, or of any other period, had no more right to dispose of, bind, or control the people of today in any way than today's Parliament or people have to dispose of, bind, or control those who will live a hundred or a thousand years from now. Every generation is, and must be, able to meet all the needs its circumstances bring. The living, not the dead, must be provided for. When a person ceases to exist, his power and needs end with him; no longer having a part in this world's affairs, he has no authority to direct who shall govern it, how its government shall be organized, or how it shall be administered.

I am arguing neither for nor against any form of government, or any party, here or elsewhere. Whatever an entire nation chooses to do, it has the right to do. Mr. Burke says no. Where, then, does the right reside? I defend the rights of the living against their being bequeathed away, controlled, and bargained over by the supposed authority of the dead, preserved in manuscripts; Mr. Burke defends the authority of the dead over the rights and freedom of the living. There was a time when kings disposed of crowns by will on their deathbeds, assigning the people, like livestock, to whichever successor they chose. That practice is now so discredited it is scarcely remembered, and so monstrous it is barely credible. But the parliamentary clauses on which Mr. Burke builds his political church are of the same kind.

Every country's laws must accord with some common principle. In England neither parent nor master, nor even all the authority of Parliament, however omnipotent it calls itself, can bind or restrict the personal freedom of a single individual beyond the age of twenty-one years. By what right, then, could the Parliament of 1688, or any other Parliament, bind all posterity forever?

Those who have left the world and those who have not yet entered it are as far apart as mortal imagination can conceive. What obligation could possibly exist between them? What rule or principle could establish that one of two beings who do not exist—the one no longer here, the other not yet here, and destined never to meet in this world—should control the other to the end of time?

In England, it is said that no money may be taken from people's pockets without their consent. But who authorized, or could authorize, the Parliament of 1688 to restrict and take away the freedom of posterity—people not yet alive to grant or refuse consent—and to limit their right to act in certain cases forever?

Nothing more absurd can be offered to human understanding than what Mr. Burke offers his readers. He tells them, and generations to come, that a certain body of men living a hundred years ago made a law, and that no power exists, or ever will or can exist, in the nation to alter it. Under how many subtleties and absurdities has a divine right to govern been imposed on human credulity? Mr. Burke has found a new one. He has shortened his journey to Rome by invoking the power of an infallible Parliament of former days, and presents its acts as divinely authoritative; for a power that no human power can alter to the end of time must surely be more than human.

But Mr. Burke has done a service—not to his cause, but to his country—by bringing these clauses before the public. They show why we must always guard against attempts by power to encroach and prevent it from growing excessive. It is rather extraordinary that the offense for which James II. was expelled—claiming power without warrant—should be repeated in another form by the very Parliament that expelled him. This shows that the Rights of Man were only imperfectly understood at the Revolution. For the right that Parliament claimed over the persons and freedom of posterity forever was not its delegated right, and could not be, because no one could grant it. It was just as tyrannical and unfounded as the power James tried to claim over Parliament and the nation, for which he was expelled. The only difference, not one of principle, is that one usurped authority over the living, the other over the unborn. Since neither has better authority than the other, both must be equally null and void, without effect.

On what basis does Mr. Burke establish any human power's right to bind posterity forever? He has produced his clauses; he must also produce proof that such a right existed, and show how. If it ever existed, it must exist now, for what belongs to human nature cannot be annihilated by human beings. It is human nature to die, and people will keep dying as long as they keep being born. But Mr. Burke has set up a kind of political Adam who binds all posterity forever. He must therefore prove that his Adam possessed such power or such a right.

The weaker a cord, the less strain it will bear, and the worse the policy of stretching it—unless the purpose is to break it. Anyone seeking to overthrow Mr. Burke's positions would have acted just as Mr. Burke has done. He would have magnified their authority precisely to call its legitimacy into question; and the moment that question arose, the claims to authority would have to be abandoned.

A moment's thought shows that although laws made by one generation often remain in force through later generations, they continue to draw their force from the consent of the living. An unrepealed law remains in force not because it cannot be repealed but because it has not been; leaving it unrepealed counts as consent.

Mr. Burke's clauses cannot even claim this advantage. In trying to become immortal, they become null. Their very nature excludes consent. They destroy any rightful force they might have by resting it on a right they cannot have. Immortal power is no human right and therefore cannot be a parliamentary right. The Parliament of 1688 might as well have passed a law authorizing its members to live forever as one making its authority live forever. All one can say of these clauses, then, is that they are empty forms of words—as meaningful as if their authors had congratulated themselves in the ancient Eastern style: O Parliament, live forever!

The world's circumstances continually change, and so do people's opinions. As government is for the living, not the dead, only the living have any right in it. What one age thinks right and finds convenient another may think wrong and find inconvenient. In such a case, who should decide—the living or the dead?

Nearly one hundred pages of Mr. Burke's book concern these clauses. It follows that if the clauses themselves, insofar as they claim an unauthorized dominion over posterity forever, have no authority and are by nature null and void, then all his lengthy deductions and declamations drawn from or founded on them are null and void too. On that ground I rest the matter.

We now turn more particularly to France. Mr. Burke's book looks like a work meant to instruct the French nation; but if I may use an extravagant metaphor to match the extravagance of the occasion, it is darkness attempting to illuminate light.

Mr. Burke's pamphlet about the French Revolution is an extraordinary example of how nations and individuals insult and provoke each other. Neither the people of France nor the National Assembly was interfering in England's affairs or those of the English Parliament. Mr. Burke attacked them without provocation, in Parliament and before the public. No standard of courtesy excuses this behavior, and no political argument justifies it.

Mr. Burke has hurled almost every insult in the English language at the French nation and the National Assembly. Across nearly four hundred furious pages, he pours out everything that resentment, prejudice, ignorance, or even knowledge could suggest. Given his approach and tone, he could have filled thousands of pages. When someone lets his tongue or pen run wild with anger, it is the person who finally runs out of energy, not the subject.

So far Mr. Burke's predictions about France have proved wrong and disappointed him. But whether his hope is resourceful or his despair malicious, he keeps finding new excuses to attack. Once, no one could persuade him that France would have a revolution. He thought the French lacked both the spirit to begin one and the courage to sustain one. Now that a revolution exists, he tries to escape his mistake by condemning it.

He is not satisfied with attacking the National Assembly. Much of his book also attacks Dr. Price, one of the kindest men alive, and two English groups: the Revolution Society and the Society for Constitutional Information.

Dr. Price preached a sermon on the 4th of November, 1789. It was the anniversary of the event that took place in 1688 and is called the Revolution in England. Discussing the sermon, Mr. Burke says: "This political clergyman firmly claims that the principles of the Revolution gave the people of England three basic rights:

1 To choose our own governors.

2 To dismiss them for misconduct.

3 To establish a government for ourselves."

Dr. Price does not say that these rights belong to any particular person or group of people. He says they belong to the whole nation. Mr. Burke, by contrast, denies that the nation has these rights, whether as a whole or in part. He denies that they exist anywhere. Stranger still, he says "the people of England completely reject such a right and will resist any attempt to exercise it with their lives and fortunes." People taking up arms and spending their lives and fortunes to prove they have no rights, rather than defend their rights, would be an entirely new discovery. It fits Mr. Burke's taste for paradox.

Mr. Burke's way of arguing that these rights no longer belong to the English people, either collectively or individually, is as astonishing and absurd as his claim. He says that the people who held the rights are dead, so the rights died with them. As proof, he quotes a declaration Parliament made to William and Mary about a hundred years ago: "The Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in the name of the people already mentioned" (meaning the English people then alive) "humbly and faithfully submit themselves, their heirs, and their descendants, forever." He also quotes a provision of another parliamentary act from the same reign. Its words, he says, "bind us" (meaning the people alive at that time), "our heirs and our descendants to them, their heirs and descendants, until the end of time."

Mr. Burke thinks these provisions settle his case. He insists they take away the nation's rights forever. Still not content with repeating this claim, he goes further. He says "even if the people of England had such a right before the Revolution"—and he admits that they did, in England and throughout Europe at an early period—"the English nation most solemnly surrendered and renounced it at the time of the Revolution, for themselves and all their descendants, forever."

Mr. Burke draws on these terrible principles to attack not just England's rights but the French Revolution and the National Assembly. He calls that distinguished body, whose members are enlightened and spread enlightenment, a group of usurpers. I will answer him frankly with a different set of principles.

The English Parliament of 1688 took an action it had the right to take for itself and for the people it represented. That action seemed right. But beyond the right delegated to it, Parliament claimed another right on its own authority: the right to bind and control every future generation until the end of time. We must separate the two claims. I accept the delegated right, but answer the other as follows: No Parliament, group of people, or generation in any country has ever had, will ever have, or could ever have the right or power to bind and control future generations until the "end of time." None can dictate forever how the world will be governed or who will govern it. Any provisions, acts, or declarations that try to do this are invalid. Their makers have neither the right nor the power to make or enforce such commands. Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself in every matter as earlier generations were. Trying to govern from the grave is the most ridiculous and arrogant kind of tyranny. No person owns another person, and no generation owns those that follow it. The Parliament and people of 1688, or of any other period, had no more right to decide the fate of people living now, or bind or control them in any way, than we have to bind or control people who will live a hundred or a thousand years from now. Every generation can meet the needs of its own time and must be allowed to do so. Government must serve the living, not the dead. When someone dies, that person's needs and power end too. No longer involved in this world's affairs, the dead have no authority to decide who governs it or how its government is organized or run.

I am not arguing for or against any form of government or any party, here or anywhere else. A whole nation has the right to do what it chooses. Mr. Burke says it does not. Where, then, does that right belong? I defend the rights of living people against having their freedom given away, controlled, and signed away by the dead on the strength of documents whose authority the dead simply claimed. Mr. Burke defends the dead's power over the rights and freedom of the living. Kings once left their crowns to successors in their wills on their deathbeds, handing over their people like farm animals. The practice has so completely disappeared that it is almost forgotten, and it is so outrageous that it is hard to believe. But the parliamentary provisions on which Mr. Burke builds his political faith are the same kind of thing.

A country's laws must follow some consistent principle. In England, neither a parent nor a master can bind or control even one person's freedom past the age of twenty-one years. Not even Parliament, though it has called itself all-powerful, can do so. How, then, could the Parliament of 1688, or any Parliament, have the right to bind every future generation forever?

Those who have died and those who have not yet been born are as far apart as we can imagine. How could one have any obligation to the other? What rule or principle could allow two groups that do not exist at the same time, and can never meet in this world, to be linked so that the first controls the second until the end of time?

People in England say money cannot be taken from them without their consent. But who authorized, or could have authorized, the Parliament of 1688 to take away the freedom of future generations? Those people did not yet exist and could neither give nor refuse consent. How could Parliament permanently limit their freedom to act in certain matters?

Mr. Burke offers his readers an absurdity greater than anyone could imagine. He tells them, and everyone who comes after them, that a group of men a hundred years ago made a law that no one in the nation has the power to change, or ever will, or ever can. How many tricks and absurdities have been used to persuade people of a divine right to govern? Mr. Burke has found a new one. By appealing to the power of a supposedly infallible Parliament in the past, he has brought himself closer to Rome. He treats what it did as if it had divine authority. A power no human being could alter until the end of time would indeed have to be more than human.

Still, Mr. Burke has done his country a service, though not his cause, by drawing attention to those provisions. They show why we must always watch for attempts to seize more power and stop power from going too far. James II. was expelled for claiming powers he had not been given. Remarkably, the Parliament that expelled him did the same thing in a different form. It shows that the Rights of Man were not fully understood at the Revolution. Parliament claimed power over the persons and freedom of all future generations forever. No one had delegated that power to it, and no one could have. Its claim was just as tyrannical and baseless as the power James tried to claim over Parliament and the nation, for which he was expelled. The only difference in principle is none at all: one tried to rule over living people, the other over people not yet born. Neither claim has better authority than the other. Both must be equally invalid and without effect.

What evidence does Mr. Burke give that any human authority can bind future generations forever? He has quoted the provisions, but he must also prove that the right behind them existed and explain how. If it ever existed, it must exist now. Human beings cannot destroy something that belongs to human nature. Human beings die, and they will keep dying as long as they keep being born. But Mr. Burke has invented a kind of political Adam whose actions bind every descendant forever. He must prove that this Adam had such a power or right.

The weaker a cord is, the less stretching it can stand. Stretching it is bad policy unless you mean to break it. Someone trying to overthrow Mr. Burke's position would have used his own method. They would have exaggerated these old authorities precisely to raise the question of whether the authorities had any right to act. As soon as that question was raised, their claims would have to be abandoned.

It takes very little thought to see that laws made by one generation often remain in force for later generations, but their continuing force comes from the consent of the living. An unrepealed law remains in force not because repeal is impossible, but because no one has repealed it. Not repealing it counts as consent.

Mr. Burke's provisions do not even meet that condition. They make themselves invalid by trying to last forever. Their very nature prevents consent. By resting their claim on a right they cannot possess, they destroy any legitimate authority they might have had. Immortal power is not a human right, so it cannot be a right of Parliament. The Parliament of 1688 might as well have passed a law allowing its members to live forever as one making its authority live forever. Those provisions amount to empty formal words. Their effect is no greater than if Parliament had congratulated itself in the old Eastern style: O Parliament, live forever!

The world's circumstances are constantly changing, and people's views change too. Government exists for the living, not the dead, so only the living have a right to decide its course. What seems right and useful in one age may seem wrong and harmful in another. When that happens, who gets to decide: the living or the dead?

Almost one hundred pages of Mr. Burke's book deal with these provisions. If the provisions have no authority and are invalid wherever they claim an unauthorized power over future generations forever, then every long argument and passionate speech he bases on them is invalid too. On that basis, I consider the question settled.

Now let us turn more closely to France. Mr. Burke's book looks like an attempt to teach the French nation. To use an exaggerated image that fits this exaggerated situation, it is darkness trying to enlighten light.