Edmund Burke was mesmerized and mystified by the revolutionary events in France that began in the summer of 1789. “All circumstances taken together,” he wrote, "the French revolution is the most astonishing that has hitherto happened in the world. The most wonderful things are brought about in many instances by means the most absurd and ridiculous, in the most ridiculous modes, and apparently by the most contemptible instruments. Everything seems out of nature in this strange chaos of levity and ferocity, and of all sorts of crimes jumbled together with all sorts of follies."
Burke was a Whig, a member of the British party that believed in limits on the power of the monarchy. In theory he endorsed the idea that the people should be able to determine their government. But in sentiment he shuddered at where the events in France appeared to be going. The French revolution was rapidly making a conservative out of this liberal.
In justification of his switch, Burke developed an interpretation of Britain's past that made self-determination a historical one-off. The English had had their own revolution in the 1680s. It ended with an offer of the crown to William of Orange and his wife Mary. "The Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, do, in the name of all the people aforesaid, most humbly and faithfully submit themselves, their heirs, and posterities forever," the leaders of Parliament declared. William and Mary accepted the deal.
The crucial part for Burke was the binding of posterity. This ruled out future overturnings of the monarchy. The moment of self-determination had passed. “If we had possessed it before, the English nation did at that time most solemnly renounce and abdicate it, for themselves and for all their posterity forever.”
Thomas Paine thought this was inane. Having urged Americans to their successful separation from Britain, the England-born Paine sought new fields for spreading the word of the rights of man. He traveled to France after the outbreak of the revolution there and became an ardent defender of the republican opponents of the French monarchy. He read Burke's comments and interpreted them as the beginning of an effort to persuade the British government to wage war against France to suppress the revolution.
Burke's indictment of revolution included much more than his novel interpretation of British history. Paine’s rebuttal countered Burke at numerous points. The most fatuous of these points, in Paine's opinion, was this idea that one generation could bind all posterity.
“There never did, there never will, and there never can exist a parliament, or any description of men, or any generation of men, in any country, possessed of the right or the power of binding and controuling posterity to the end of time or of commanding for ever how the world shall be governed, or who shall govern it,” he replied to Burke. “And therefore all such clauses, acts or declarations by which the makers of them attempt to do what they have neither the right nor the power to do, nor the power to execute, are in themselves null and void.”
Self-government meant government by people themselves, not by their ancestors. “Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself, in all cases, as the ages and generations which preceded it. The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies. Man has no property in man; neither has any generation a property in the generations which are to follow.”
Paine extrapolated from English history to the future of humanity. “The parliament or the people of 1688, or of any other period, had no more right to dispose of the people of the present day, or to bind or to controul them in any shape whatever, than the parliament or the people of the present day have to dispose of, bind or controul those who are to live a hundred or a thousand years hence. Every generation is, and must be, competent to all the purposes which its occasions require. It is the living, and not the dead, that are to be accommodated.”
Every generation must look to itself. “When man ceases to be, his power and his wants cease with him; and having no longer any participation in the concerns of this world, he has no longer any authority in directing who shall be its governors, or how its government shall be organized, or how administered.”
Between them, Burke and Paine staked out the boundaries of debate regarding the nature and legitimacy of political change. Burke contended that the present was and should be bound by the past. Elsewhere he and other conservatives noted that social institutions and norms evolve through trial and error. They are never perfect, but they’re better than the many competing systems they’ve outlasted. That accords legitimacy and demands respect. The burden of proof is always on those who tamper with the status quo.
Paine believed that the world is created anew with each generation. The past is less likely to be a source of wisdom than of oppression. Humans today can choose the best of the past, but there is no presumption in favor of the past. Knowledge advances on many fronts, in governance as much as others.
Events in France made Burke appear the more prescient, in the short term. The revolution there descended into the reign of terror from which the dictator Napoleon emerged.
Yet the debate has never ended. Burke remains a favorite among conservatives today. Paine is remembered better for his contributions to America's revolution than to France’s, but his philosophy suffuses modern progressive thinking.
Excellent essay. A great resource on this topic is Yuval Levin's The Great Debate, Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, And the Birth of Right and Left. I would submit that one shouldn't over emphasize Burke's argument that any one generation could bind those that follow but rather focus on his emphasis that no one rational man or generation could theorize their way to a better solution because it was simply beyond their capacity. Rather, as you note, Burke's main point was that knowledge was incremental, building upon previous knowledge and also deconstructing earlier knowledge when it needed to be improved. Not only does this under pin the conservative versus liberal concept of politics but also the British vs Continental approach to learning, now often seen as the difference between how historians and political economists approach a problem and how political scientists approach a problem. The former accept the messiness of humanity and the incremental wisdom, the later seek to impose a neat and rational theory on humanity. The former draw inferences from the evidence, the later seek evidence to support their reasoning.
quote: "Paine believed that the world is created anew with each generation. The past is less likely to be a source of wisdom than of oppression. Humans today can choose the best of the past, but there is no presumption in favor of the past. Self-government meant government by people themselves, not by their ancestors"
This would seem a direct rebuttal of the so-called "originalists" or "textualist" views of the Constitution which conservative like to push- By using these faux doctrines they are indeed letting the past govern from the grave as well as "The most fatuous of these points, in Paine's opinion, was this idea that one generation could bind all posterity" This whole attitude of some on SCOTUS that we need to look at how things were done historically is bogus!
A "living Constitution" allows each generation to govern itself.