Paine's Rights of Man and William's Letters from France: Principles v. People
In a turbulent time characterized by rapid political and ideological change when the succession of one powerful party to another frequently occurred, Helen Maria Williams composed Letters from France, exposing her views on the past and current situations of the state of French politics. The letters span six years, from one year after the official start of the French Revolution through its first several years. They allow the reader insight into the current, popular sentiment of the time that surrounded the issues at hand.
Revolutionary Parallels
In Letters, Williams parallels, in many respects, The Rights of Man, the scathing commentary published by Thomas Paine, which aimed at diverting any positive attention Edmund Burke might have received for his Reflections on the Revolution in France. Their publications differ in intent and purpose, but when narrowing the scope to each of their respective views of the events and ideologies surrounding the French Revolution, their arguments are mostly the same. Williams, however, has the distinct advantage of longevity in her commentary and can comment not only on the events that incited the revolution but also on the events that followed it. In this advantage lies their difference; each sees the revolution as a positive change in the French political front, and each feels the necessity for a change in principles rather than the people involved. Still, Williams can see the difficulty and eventual inability to change the tenets governing France and the subsequent failure of its eighteenth-century revolutionary political movement.
Williams’ Letters on the French Revolution
Early in Letters, Williams sees the changes in the political system as beneficial to all, working to eliminate or downplay the class distinctions to build a more unified France. As illustrated by her experience at the Champ de Mars, Williams’ initial reaction to the revolution is positive. She sees “the distinctions of rank … forgotten; and, inspired by the same spirit, the highest and lowest orders of citizens gloried in taking up the spade, and assisting the persons employed in a work in which the welfare of the State depended” (Williams 509). She feels that through the general and widespread discontent with hereditary despotism among the French people and the common wish for a constitutional monarchy, France’s citizens have finally united as a nation and a state. At this time, the unification occurs among the formerly oppressed Third Estate and all of France’s citizens, from the clergy to the king to the peasants in the field. What guides this unity, though, is not just a mere harmony among men, not just a feeling of contentedness with the present popular leadership; it is, in fact, far from that; their unity is guided by and wholly dependent upon the underlying principle of the movement.
Principles versus People
In this respect, Paine and William’s works are in perfect accord; each promotes the idea that principles, not people, should be the foundation upon which any popular movement stands, “for even if the superstructure should fall, the foundation would remain” (Williams 528). Williams attributes the success of the early years of the French Revolution to its adherence to the principle of remand rather than revenge on the person. She sees remaining in France a vital sense of historic nationality adjoined with a vigorous sense of popular revolution, the past joined with the future, which creates a feeling of promise among the French people and inspires an almost Romantic vision in Williams:
When the procession passed the street where Henry the Fourth was assassinated, every man paused as if by general consent: cries of joy were suspended, and succeeded by a solemn silence. This tribute of regret paid from the sudden impulse of feeling at such a moment, was perhaps the most honourable testimony to the virtues of that amiable Prince which his memory has yet received.
In the streets, at the windows and on the roofs of the houses, the people, transported with joy, shouted, and wept as the procession passed … The people ran to the doors of their houses, loaded up with refreshments, which they offered to the troops; and crouds of women surrounded the soldiers, and holding up their infants in their arms, and melting into tears, promised to make their children imbibe, from their earliest age, an inviolable attachment to the principles of the new constitution. (Williams 510)
Williams emphasizes the bond between the young and the old, the new spirit of France and its glorious history, and her emphasis is on the principles rather than the people involved in these feelings. Just as Paine says that “[i]t was not against Louis XVI, but against the despotic principles of the government, that the nation revolted” (Paine 26), the people of France honor the principles to which the benevolent King Henry the Fourth adhered, which coincide with many of the feelings circulating at the time. Those present did not necessarily honor Henry the Fourth, but the ideals and principles for which Henry stood. Paine, too, feels that the actual fuel behind the revolutionary fire in France lies not in the proponents of the revolution, for, at the time, “[t]he King was known to be a friend of the nation” (Paine 26), and the “monarch and the monarchy were two distinct and separate things and it was against the established despotism of the latter, and not … the former that the revolt was commenced, and the Revolution has been carried” (Paine 26). Paine congratulated France for its inspiration and achievement. Based upon his feelings about the solidity of the foundation of the revolution, he felt that its objectives might last. Paine’s account, though, predates Williams by several years. In these years, Williams includes evidence indicating that the foundation of the movement may not have been as purely driven as initially imagined by Paine and herself.
Reform or Destruction
This is the point at which the two commentaries diverge, if only because Williams authored her publication later than Paine did. Williams sees that the less than glorious aftereffects of the revolution rival the atrocities committed before its conception, because of power-mad men like Robespierre. What causes the defilement of the original vision is the transformation of the revolution from a movement to reform public policy into a movement to destroy the former makers of public policy. The usurper of the throne, in this case, the Mountain, a political party headed by Robespierre, infamous for the murder of 40,000 nobles in France, including Louis XVI, seeks to “act at once as accusers, party, and judge … [and) behold the unfortunate monarch deprived, not only of his inviolability as king but of his rights as a citizen; and perhaps the irrevocable decree of posterity may reverse that of the National Convention” (Williams 526). She fears that the National Convention, the initiators of the legalization of constitutional rights for the Third Estate, the original proponents of the rights of man, will be superseded by, and known for inciting the vengeful actions of the Mountain and the succeeding Jacobins, who were equally brutal. Williams sees the nation that Paine felt “was acted upon by a higher stimulus than what the consideration of persons could inspire, and sought a higher conquest than could be produced by the downfall of an enemy” (Paine 28) lose that stimulation and fall into a more bottomless pit than those they impeached from power. Time alone differentiates Williams’ and Paine’s arguments; principally, one parallels the other, but the two authors’ perceptions vary circumstantially.
Parallels of Thought
Williams’ Letters logically parallel the reasoning that underlies Thomas Paine’s Rights and may, to some degree, be seen as a circumstantial application of the principles of Paine’s ideas. Her arguments and observations follow those observed by Paine and only diverge after a span of years, which has allowed her to see man’s inability to dissociate himself from an established mindset. She also sees that a lack of human compassion can break the momentum of a movement that promised just that. Each author, though, catches the essence of the period’s philosophy. The Enlightenment promised equality under the law and social progress, and out of these Enlightenment ideas shot the sparks that incited revolution not only in France but also in America, Haiti, the South American colonies, and many other countries and colonies ruled by absolutist despots. In many of these countries and colonies, the ideas took root, allowing the people to override the established principles, thereby establishing new foundations from which to advance. For France, though, it would be nearly forty years after the publication of these works before the ideas expressed within them would be cemented into a lasting popular contract.
Works Cited
Matlak, Richard E. and Anne K. Mellor, eds. British Literature: 1780-1830. Orlando: Harcourt Brace, 1996.
Paine, Thomas. “The Rights of Man.” Matlak and Mellor 25-8. Williams, Helen Maria. “Letters from France.” Matlak and Mellor 508-29.
