The Political Philosophy of Thomas Paine

4 Permanent Revolution and Constitution Making

CHAPTER 4 PERMANENT REVOLUTION AND CONSTITUTION MAKING Paine’s strong advocacy of and active participation in revolutionary action and constitution making as global phenomena drove his views in Common Sense, but they are most evident in his French revolutionary writings, beginning with the Rights of Man and his attack on Burke and Burke’s famous Reflections.1 His inspiration for universal transformation lay at the root of his famous statement that we live in “an age of Revolution, in which everything may be looked for.” Paine hoped that a European Congress, one that paralleled the Americans’ First Continental Congress, would challenge the iron grip that monarchy and aristocracy possessed over each country’s subject citizenry. If this congress were in fact to take place, it would advance “the progress of free Government ” and “the civilization of Nations with each other.” It was an event “nearer in probability, than once were the Revolutions and Alliance of France and America” (RM, 147). Paine was thus gradually developing the idea that the twentieth century would know as “the permanent revolution,” a global condition of constant upheaval until the rise of a universal civilization of reason, science, and democracy.2 The very idea of revolution became like wine to his head. Once this new state of aVairs came into being in all nations, the world would see the end of warfare, because war reflected aristocratic domination, while democracy did not: “War is the system of Government on the old construction,” but “man is not the enemy of man” (RM, 146). Universal peace would result only after global revolution 77 ;l: had succeeded, when monarchy and aristocracy had been abolished forever. So optimistic was he that he boldly and, as it turned out, naively predicted that no “monarchy and aristocracy will continue seven years longer in any of the enlightened countries in Europe” (156). Universal reformation would be ignited with “a small spark, kindled in America,” from which an entire “flame has arisen, not to be extinguished” (210). Representative democracy, the only form of government to adequately protect the rights of man, would replace the English system. Government on the old system, is an assumption of power, for the aggrandisement of itself; on the new, a delegation of power, for the common benefit of society. The former supports itself by keeping up a system of war; the latter promotes a system of peace, as the true means of enriching a nation. The one encourages national prejudices; the other promotes universal society, as the means of universal commerce. The one measures its prosperity, by the quantity of revenue it extorts, the other proves its excellence by the small quantity of taxes it requires” (171). By 1792, because in one single generation, the world witnessed two major revolutions, one in America, the other in process in France, Paine claimed, “the objects that now press on the public attention, are the French Revolution, and the prospect of a general revolution in all governments” (266). Was all this rhetoric simply nonsense? Paine was a phenomenal rhetorician, whose words were always cultivated with a consistent self-certainty. So, naturally, in the Rights of Man, monarchy , rank, and privilege shared a fate even worse than they had in Common Sense.3 We would be hard pressed to find a more blistering critique of these three evils than in his response to Burke’s Reflections. Echoing JeVerson’s famous phrase that “the earth belongs in usufruct to the living,” Paine argued that “man has no authority over posterity in matters of personal right; and therefore, no man, or body of men, had, or can have, a right to set up hereditary government” (172).4 He soundly reemphasized this notion when he contended that “every age and generation is, and must be as a matter of right, as free to act for itself in all cases, as the age and generation that preceded it. The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave is the most ridicuThe Political Philosophy of Thomas Paine 78 lous and insolent of all tyrannies. Man has no property in man, neither has one generation a property in the generations that are to follow.”5 Most states, after declaring independence in 1776, had written new constitutions, but Connecticut and Rhode Island simply transformed their colonial charters into their constitutions . All others elected deputies to constitutional conventions to draft their first state constitutions. Franklin, as...