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Braeden Smith

British Lit II

Fall 2022

Professor I. Strout

Essay #1

A Comparison of Burke’s, Paine’s, and Wollstonecraft’s Responses to the French Revolution

The American Revolution may have fired the shot heard around the world, but it was the

French Revolution that sent political and social shockwaves through the foundations of Europe.

While any number of issues contributed to the Revolution, it is the aftereffects of the event that

are of greatest significance. The early success of the Revolution in France inspired widespread

interest, both positive and negative, in topics such as personal liberty, equality, and other

freedoms as well as debate on how one might go about encouraging similar reforms in their own

government. Though the increasing extremism, violence, and authoritarianism that later

characterized France soured this keen interest, those early days were marked by enthusiastic

debates regarding democratic ideals. The essays and rebuttals offered by the English writers

Edmund Burke, Mary Wollstonecraft and Thomas Paine during this time offer a particularly

fascinating view into the controversies and disagreements spawned in England due to the French

Revolution.

Edmund Burke was among the earliest and most important writers opposed to the French

Revolution and his essay Reflections on the Revolution in France served as both a condemnation

of the Revolution and a defense of England’s more conservative position. In the essay, Burke

warns the people of England against praising the events of the Revolution and that they should

rather “...suspend our judgment until the first effervescence is a little subsided… until we see
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something deeper than the agitation of a troubled and frothy surface (56).” He was skeptical of

the so-called success of the Revolution since it thus far lacked the practical functions of “...how

it had been combined with government; with public force; with the discipline and obedience of

armies; with the collection of an effective and well-distributed revenue; with morality and

religion… (Burke 56).” In contrast, Burke made a point of praising England’s system of

government, the merits of which he attributes to a long thought-out history of entailed

inheritance, their strong protections of property ownership. “By a constitutional policy,” says

Burke “working after the pattern of nature, we receive, we hold, we transmit our government and

our privileges, in the same manner in which we transmit our property and our lives (58).” In his

view, England has achieved its prosperous state by slowly building up liberties and laws over

centuries of progress and that any sudden, revolutionary changes would therefore be untenable in

practice. Furthermore, Burke harshly criticized the harsh methods by which the revolutionaries

usurped the monarchy, lamenting “...the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists,

and calculators, has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever (60).” He points

out that a great deal of European civilization “depended for ages upon two principles… I mean

the spirit of a gentleman and the spirit of religion (Burke 61),” and that in abandoning those

tenets they were disregarding the current standards of morality and behavior. “We know,” Burke

claims, “and what is better, we feel inwardly, that religion is the basis of civil society, and the

source of all good and of all comfort (61).” Burke’s arguments center on the idea that, in their

zeal for liberty, the French had rejected many traditional social systems that maintained both

stability and morality in their society without establishing viable replacements.

Additionally, Burke’s support for these traditional conservative values also presents itself

through his word choice and tone in addition to his arguments. Throughout his essay, Burke
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wrote in a tone that favored neutral, lengthy arguments which he occasionally interrupted with

more dramatic, but still reserved, personal observances. His use of language such as “…

mortmain… (Burke 58),” “…contumelies… (Burke 59),” and “Regicide, parricide, and

sacrilege… (Burke 60),” combined with his frequent references to longstanding legal documents

and other institutions gives the impression of an educated noble writing a political treatise rather

than a mere exhortation of specific philosophical virtues. Therefore, as evidenced through his

conservative arguments and upper-class tone and language, Burke’s primary motive in writing

Reflections on the Revolution in France was to urge the English people to remember and remain

true to their history of relative stability before campaigning for untested reforms like those in

France.

In response to Reflections on the Revolution in France, Mary Wollstonecraft wrote A

Vindication of the Rights of Men, in a Letter to the Right Honorable Edmund Burke; Occasioned

by His ‘Reflections on the Revolution in France’ to defend republican principles and to attack

Burke's conservative arguments. One argument she took particular issue with was his strong

advocacy for England’s traditional system of governance and slow adoptions of reform.

Wollstonecraft strongly condemned the idea “that we are to reverence the rust of antiquity, and

term the unnatural customs… the sage fruit of experience… (63).” In her opinion, such

arguments appeal only to the wealthy and noble who benefit from the current system of

government, fearing what results republican reform would bring and thus would rather “remain

for ever in frozen inactivity because a thaw, whilst it nourishes the soil, spreads a temporary

inundation; and the fear of risking any personal present convenience should prevent a struggle

for the most estimable advantages (Wollstonecraft 64).” Wollstonecraft further derided Burke’s

affection for England’s government to be like “a duty to love their relations with a blind,
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indolent tenderness, that will not see the faults it might assist to correct… (65)” and that such

affection separated him from natural reasoning that would improve their government.

Wollstonecraft utterly rejected Burke’s idea that the English government was superior due to its

longstanding history, which she viewed as stagnant and detrimental to progress, and further

claimed that Burke's arguments revealed his own contempt for the poor and his inability to see

any issue within the monarchical system.

This dissonance between Wollstonecraft’s liberal sympathies and Burke’s conservative

leaning are particularly visible in the difference of their language. In contrast to Burke’s noble

tone, Wollstonecraft’s writing favors the first person much more than Burke’s does, and her

frequent, personal attacks and outright statements of opinion make her appear more human than

Burke’s own formal arguments. Pointed insults such as “…I perceive, from the whole tenor of

your reflections, that you have a moral antipathy to reason… (Wollstonecraft 63)” and “Your

real or artificial affection for the English constitution seems to me to resemble the brutal

affection of some weak characters (Wollstonecraft 65).” lend her arguments more personal

interest as she condemns Burke’s conservative principles. Wollstonecraft’s preference for

everyday language and focus on natural reason in her arguments brilliantly reflects her advocacy

for liberal reform in contrast to her scathing judgment of conservative principles.

Though sharing Wollstonecraft’s disdain for the arguments of Burke, Thomas Paine’s

Rights of Man presents itself more as a defense of the principles of the French Revolution than

an attack on conservative principles. Like Wollstonecraft, Paine disagreed with Burke’s claim

that English law was superior due to its history and foundation in tradition. “The vanity and

presumption of governing beyond the grave,” says Paine, “is the most ridiculous and insolent of

all tyrannies… It is the living, and not the dead, that are to be accommodated (66).” He believed
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that the government should first serve the people who are alive to witness its actions, rather than

the dead who established it for situations long past. Paine went on to draw parallels between that

idea of governing in and for the present with the causes of the French Revolution, which he

stated were the fault of long-standing government institutions rather than that of the current

monarch. “The Monarch and the Monarchy,” Paine explained, “were distinct and separate things;

and it was against the established despotism of the latter, and not against the person or principles

of the former, that the revolt commenced, and the revolution has been carried (67).” While Burke

condemned the harsh treatment the French monarch received by the revolutionaries, Paine

recalled the sufferings of the French people under tyrannies that had long ago infected the

entirety of their government. Such corruption, he claimed, must be addressed by a complete

rebirth of the system, a purge to begin again from a natural and reasonable beginning, and that

the monarch, as an inherent part of that corrupt system, must also depart. Although Paine shared

Burke’s sympathy for the plight of the French monarch, he also denounced Burke’s writing

regarding the events of the Revolution as overly dramatic and misleading. “Mr. Burke,” he says,

“should remember that he is writing history, and not plays; and that his readers will expect truth,

and not the spouting rant of high toned exclamation (Paine 68).” In contradiction to Burke’s

characterization, Paine claims that the French Revolution was as mundane and orderly as

possible and “…that less mischief could scarcely have accompanied such an event, when

considered with the treacherous and hostile aggravations of the enemies of the Revolution (68).” 

Ironically, though Paine shares Wollstonecraft’s disdain for Burke, his overall tone is

much more like Burke’s more conservative writings. As evident in phrases like “As to the tragic

paintings, by which Mr. Burke has outraged his own imagination… (67)” and “Not one glance of

compassion… has he bestowed on those who lingered out the most wretched of lives… (69),” he
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obviously disagreed with Burke’s representation of the Revolution and disapproved of his

condescending tone toward the lower classes. However, the mild tone in his arguments appears

more like the detached language of Burke’s own arguments than Wollstonecraft’s more personal

rebuttals, which reflect Paine’s claim that the events of the revolution were based on reasonable,

even natural, responses to the longstanding despotism present in their government. His calm

language compounds his arguments that the Revolution, while fueled by revolutionary

principles, was a predicable, sedate event. Thus, he shares Wollstonecraft’s passion and

arguments for liberal reform targeting England’s traditional conservatism but presents them in

more formal and reasonable tones that resemble the writings of those same conservative authors,

such as Burke.

For both conservatives and liberals, the French Revolution was a period of critical

development across Europe. The decisive actions and liberal ideology of the revolutionaries

attracted both passionate acclaim and scathing criticism as people began to wonder whether their

own governments would benefit from similar reforms. England, one of the world's most

powerful nations, with a history of valuing freedoms, faced comparable questions. Vigorous

debates between those advocating for reform, such as Wollstonecraft and Paine, and those

defending England’s traditional principles and the conservative monarchy, such as Burke, were a

defining trait of the time. Their arguments for and against changes to their government, their

traditions, and their very identity influenced the future of not only England but that of the world.
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Works Cited

Burke, Edmund. “Reflections on the Revolution in France.” The Broadview Anthology of British

Literature: Concise Volume B (3rd ed.), Eds. Joseph Black, et al. Broadview, 2019, pp 56

– 63.

Wollstonecraft, Mary. “A Vindication of the Rights of Men, in a Letter to the Right Honourable

Edmund Burke; Occasioned by his ‘Reflections on the Revolution in France.’” The

Broadview Anthology of British Literature: Concise Volume B (3rd ed.), Eds. Joseph

Black, et al. Broadview, 2019, pp 63 – 65.

Paine, Thomas. “Rights of Man.” The Broadview Anthology of British Literature: Concise

Volume B (3rd ed.). Eds. Joseph Black, et al. Broadview, 2019, pp 65 – 69.