The French Revolution:  Thomas Paine and William Godwin

Things to Consider:

• Connection to American Revolutionary Rhetoric (see Declaration of Independence )

• How, according to the editors, does Paine's style compare to Burke's?
• Explain:  "The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies" (122).  To what aspect of Burke's argument is Paine alluding?

• Explain:  "He pities the plumage, but forgets the dying bird" (126).

• Explain:  "A nation has at all times an inherent indefeasible right to abolish any form of government it finds inconvenient, and to establish such as accords with its interest, disposition and happiness" (127).

• According to Paine, how do the revolutions in America and France differ from past revolutions?

• What does anarchist political philosophy involve?
• Explain:  "If justice have any meaning, it is just that I should contribute every thing in my power to the benefit of the whole" (128).

• Is Godwin's argument regarding the chambermaid a sympathetic one? Explain.
• Explain:  "That life ought to be preferred which will be most conducive to the general good" (129).

• Explain:  "Gratitude . . . is no part either of justice or virtue" (130).

• How is Burke "contending for the authority of the dead over the rights and freedom of the living" (123)?
• Explain:  "A law not repealed continues in force, not because it cannot be repealed, but because it is not repealed; and the non-repealing passes for consent" (123).
• In what ways, according to the editors, was Louis XVI "the friend of the Nation"(123--see footnote)?

• Explain:  "A casual discontinuance of the practice of despotism, is not a discontinuance of its principles" (124).
• How, according to Paine, is it true that despotism "divides and subdivides itself" (124).

• Explain:  "It is power, and not principles, that Mr. Burke venerates" (125).
• Are Paine's suggestions about "so few sacrifices" accurate? Is it true that "principles, and not persons, were tbe meditated objects of destruction" (125)?  Explain.

• Explain:  "If any generation of men ever possessed the right of dictating the mode by which the world should be governed forever, it was the first generation that existed" (126).  Is there a contradiction involved here?  Explain.
• What does Paine mean by the "unity of man" (126)?

• According to Paine,  what two points comprise man's duty?
• What, according to Paine, is government?

• According to Godwin, should we in fact "'love our neighbour as ourselves'" (128)?  Explain.

• Who is François Fénelon? 

129n:
• Why were all the references to females subsequently revised?

• Explain:  "If the extraordinary case should occur in which  I can promote the general good by my death more than by my life, justice requires that I should be content to die" (130).
• What is the one thing political institutions can assuredly do?

• What, according to Godwin, is the difference between "informing the people and inflaming them" (131)?

• Why must there be a "lapse of years" before reducing theory "into actual execution" (132)?
• Why is Godwin opposed to cohabitation?
• How does Godwin's views of marriage compare with Wollstonecraft's (see 116, as well as her Vindication of the Rights of Women, esp. 293-301).
• How, according to Godwin, is the institution of marriage "a system of fraud" (132)?

• Explain: "Positive laws which are made to restrain our vices, irritate and multiply them" (132-33).

• Why, according to Godwin, will it no longer be important to know the identity of children's fathers?