print“Everything human and divine sacrificed to the idol of public credit,” is how the Brilliant Edmund Burke, supporter of the American colonists, described the illiberal, irreligious, intolerant French Revolution. In return, the punk Thomas Paine spat worthless venom at Burke for his devastating critique of that blood-drenched Revolution. Like contemporary Americans, Paine’s fealty was to the Jacobins, who, for his troubles, almost had him guillotined. The Rights of Man, in particular, is intended as a refutation of Edmund Burke’s critique. Naturally, it does nothing of the sort.
There is no affinity between the French and American founding ideas. And Paine’s proto-socialism—he advocated welfare financed by taxes—is quintessentially unAmerican. Yet Paine is beloved of Americans; of Burke I seldom hear. I intend to change that here on BAB.
Let me begin with an excerpt from Reflections on the Revolution in France, where Burke speaks about the proliferation of fiat money (“fictitious representation”). He does so a great deal in this magnificent tract. Burke hammering on about “current circulating credit,” “defiance of economical principles,” and “bankruptcy” could not be more germane in fin de siècle America:
“At present the state of their treasury sinks every day more and more in cash, and swells more and more in fictitious representation. When so little within or without is now found but paper, the representative not of opulence but of want, the creature not of credit but of power, they imagine that our flourishing state in England is owing to that bank-paper, and not the bank-paper to the flourishing condition of our commerce, to the solidity of our credit, and to the total exclusion of all idea of power from any part of the transaction. They forget that, in England, not one shilling of paper money of any description is received but of choice; that the whole has had its origin in cash actually deposited; and that it is convertible at pleasure, in an instant and without the smallest loss, into cash again. Our paper is of value in commerce, because in law it is of none. It is powerful on ‘Change, because in Westminster Hall it is impotent. In payment of a debt of twenty shillings, a creditor may refuse all the paper of the Bank of England. Nor is there amongst us a single public security, of any quality or nature whatsoever, that is enforced by authority. In fact, it might be easily shown that our paper wealth, instead of lessening the real coin, has a tendency to increase it; instead of being a substitute for money, it only facilitates its entry, its exit, and its circulation; that it is the symbol of prosperity, and not the badge of distress. Never was a scarcity of cash and an exuberance of paper a subject of complaint in this nation.”
[SNIP]
Readers: search the online volume, posted on Bartleby.com, and post comments excerpting your favorite tracts.
Update I (August 26): Prof. Dennis O’keeffe is the author of Burke, due out in October of this year.
Update II: Russell Kirk on Burke:
“Written at white heat, the “Reflections” burns with all the wrath and anguish of a prophet who saw the traditions of Christendom and the fabric of civil society dissolving before his eyes. Yet his words are suffused with a keenness of observation, the mark of a practical statesman. This book is polemic at its most magnificent, and one of the most influential political treatises in the history of the world.” (The Essential Russel Kirk, 2007, p. 144)
Ilana,
I am pleased to see you posting Burke. Peter Stanlis, author of “Burk and the Natural Law,” has an interview with University Bookman at the following link :www.kirkcenter.org/index.php/bookman/article/the-legacies-of-edmund-burke-and-robert-frost. Anything Peter Stanlis writes about Robert Frost or Edmund Burke is worth reading and considering. Dr. Stanlis would be inspired by your interest in Burke and your recognition of the differences between the French and American revolutions. I believe he founded and edited the Edmund Burk Review for some years and would no doubt be a reader of your blog if he was younger and more able to engage in such endeavors.
OOPS. I forgot to list a favorite quote!!
“Liberty without wisdom, and without virtue is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint.” (Reflections on the Revolution in France, 1790.)
What makes leftists so dangerous is the notion that man has no nature and can therefor be programmed to fit the designs of Utopian states. If people do not accept fiat money, its because of some reactionary impulse that must be eliminated (in labor camps) not because there’s anything wrong with worthless paper. The idea of VOLUNTARY exchange is completely alien to leftists, but its the basis of all successful economies. Even the most coercive state-capitalists (think China) rely on a (relatively) free economy as its basis, from which the state extracts much. Burke was truly a genius who understood the inescapable nature of man. Thank you for highlighting his work!
How’s this:
…”In denying their false claims of right, I do not mean to injure those which are real, and are such as their pretended rights would totally destroy. … Men have a right to live by that rule; they have a right to do justice, as between their fellows,…. They have a right to the fruits of their industry and to the means of making their industry fruitful. They have a right to the acquisitions of their parents, to the nourishment and improvement of their offspring, to instruction in life, and to consolation in death. Whatever each man can separately do, without trespassing upon others, he has a right to do for himself; and he has a right to a fair portion of all which society, with all its combinations of skill and force, can do in his favor. In this partnership ALL MEN HAVE EQUAL RIGHTS,
BUT NOT TO EQUAL THINGS. He that has but five shillings in the partnership has as good a right to it as he that has five hundred pounds has to his larger proportion. But he has not a right to an equal dividend in the product of the joint stock; …”
Burke is as remarkable in depth as he is in breadth. His critique of the Revolution in France is really the first embryonic study of totalitarianism, an extreme despotism of which in Burke’s day France was the only exemplar. He really belongs in the ascendancy of Orwell, Koestler, Camus, Popper, Kolakowski. Had the world really listened to Burke many of the horrors we witnessed in the twentieth century would simply not have occurred.
By all means more Burke. How to pick a favorite quote? I’ll start basic, apropos the times.
“To love the little platoon we belong to in society is the first principle (the germ as it were) of public affections.”
– Edmund Burke