Chapter 97
Revolution, rebellion and civil strife; overthrowing governments and its justification.
429 passages · 199 principal · Covers the 49 volumes of primary texts
Revolution, in the sense these books give it, covers every way in which an established order is overturned or fails to hold. It includes the conspiracy of a few great men and the rising of a multitude. It includes sedition, rebellion and civil war, and the large question of whether subjects may ever lawfully cast off their rulers. The word itself, however, keeps escaping the political sphere. Burke, the most sustained writer on the subject in the collection, calls the French upheaval a revolution in sentiments, manners and moral opinions, one that destroyed respect itself1. Emerson says that wherever a true man comes, revolution comes with him2. He holds that self-reliance must revolutionize religion, education and property3, and that affection flowing out to one’s fellows would be the greatest revolution of all4. Channing sees society passing through silent or bloody revolutions until distinctions born of force give way to natural order5. Rousseau calls the building of huts and the invention of metallurgy and agriculture revolutions in the human condition6,7. Lyell, in contrast, rejects the doctrine of sudden revolutions in nature8, and Darwin likewise dismisses catastrophic “revolutions of climate”9. The idea is great for these books because it joins the oldest questions of political obligation to the modern sense, voiced by Carlyle, of living in an age of revolutions in which every institution is tried by fire10.
Whether a given overthrow is a rebellion or a revolution is itself contested, and the answer often depends on who wins. In Marlowe’s *Edward the Second* the elder Spencer, condemned as a traitor, replies that the rebel is the one who fights against his prince11. Voltaire observes that what is a revolution in England is mere sedition elsewhere, crushed by mercenaries12. He judges the French civil wars of the League and the Fronde pointless because they did not have liberty as their object, unlike the English rebellion13. Milton’s Samson insists that he is a divinely commissioned deliverer and not a private rebel14. The Massachusetts Body of Liberties makes subverting the frame of government a capital crime15. Lowell, writing of the American Civil War, distinguishes rebellion used as a means of revolution from a lawful change of government16.
On the causes of sedition, Bacon gives the most systematic account. Seditions have two kinds of material, much poverty and much discontent, and they are kindled by sparks17. He lists religious innovation, taxes, oppression and faction among the causes. He thinks grievances rooted in fear the most dangerous, since discontents act like humours that inflame the body18. More had earlier feared continual sedition wherever no one could defend his gains by law19. Lowell says upheaval grows from the wrongs of men, and that revolts of intelligence, not of ignorance, are the dangerous kind20. Emerson finds that property, rather than honour or religion, has bred English revolt from Magna Carta onward21. Yet misery alone is not sufficient. Sydney Smith notes that Turkey, where no one complains of government, has the most frequent revolts22. Manzoni records that extreme famine produced no insurrection at all23.
Among the great, faction and ambition do the work. Plutarch traces the Roman civil wars to Caesar’s reconciling of Crassus and Pompey, whose union subverted the aristocracy24. The state then split into a party of Pompey and a party of Caesar25. Dryden adds that in the wars of Marius and Sylla each side professed liberty while avenging private enemies26. Dante’s Florence is torn by factions that expel one another in turn27,28. Rumour and agitation supply the occasion. Bacon reads libels and false news as signs of coming tempests29, and he warns that harsh suppression of such talk is no remedy30. Plutarch shows popular orators stirring sedition without real grievance31. Pascal goes deepest. The art of revolution, he says, is to unsettle customs by probing their lack of authority, which can be done to any law, and it ends in the loss of everything32,33. Emerson turns the matter around and calls fear the herald of revolutions, a sign of rottenness and of great wrongs that need to be revised34.
Remedies follow from these diagnoses. Bacon advises rulers to remove want35 and to allow moderate liberty for grievances to vent36. They should keep discontented persons from finding a fit head, divide factions, and guard their own careless speech37. Seditions should also be checked at their beginnings38. Plutarch’s Coriolanus says the same: disorder is the first step toward open revolt and should be checked early39. Machiavelli notes that a rebel state, once reconquered and its guilty punished, is held more firmly40. Reconciliation has its advocates too. After Caesar’s murder the senate passed acts of oblivion41 and Cicero urged amnesty42. Long records that Marcus Aurelius recommended mercy for the partisans of Cassius43. Andrew Johnson, declaring the American insurrection at an end, says the defeated must be won as friends and not held by force44. Pascal draws the most conservative conclusion of all. Civil war is the greatest of evils, so a hereditary fool on the throne is preferable to rewarding merit and inviting contention45,46.
Conspiracy is the coup’s narrower form. Machiavelli finds it difficult against an esteemed prince, because conspirators need discontented accomplices who may betray them47. They must also fear the people’s hostility afterward, as when Bologna avenged Bentivoglio48. Plutarch’s Catiline bears this out. He exploits unequal wealth and Pompey’s absence49, plans slaughter and burning50, and is exposed by letters51. Brutus and Cassius succeed in killing Caesar52, but a mob roused by Caesar’s will then hunts them53. Dana’s account of a mutiny at sea is a small modern instance of Machiavelli’s rule: the plot collapses when the carpenter sounds out the mate, who reports it54.
Poetry gives the rebel his grandest form in Milton’s Satan. Satan draws a third of Heaven with lies55 and urges his host to cast off the yoke, while Abdiel stands against him56. Bagehot calls him a perfect portrait of the revolutionary anarch57, and Dryden likens malcontents to Satan seducing the angels58. Other poets weigh loyalty against force. Marvell’s Cromwell casts the old kingdom into another mould and implies that ancient rights hold only as men are strong59. Scott’s Dundee refuses to own a usurper60, and Burns curses the rebels against the Stuart king61. Travellers in Latin America saw such usurpation reduced to routine. Darwin counted fifteen changes of government in nine months62 and four armed chiefs contending in Peru63. Dana describes revolutions begun by desperate men seeking spoils64.
Popular risings have their own logic. Froissart’s chronicle of 1381 follows the commons rising under Tyler, Straw and Ball to abolish bondage65. They sack the houses of lawyers66, storm the Tower and behead the archbishop67, and Tyler plans to seize the king and rule68. Then Tyler is killed at Smithfield69, and the leaderless host disperses70,71. Manzoni analyses the crowd most finely. His Milan bread riot moves from the bakehouse to murder and plunder72, and the tumult is driven by instigators and restrainers competing for the mass73. Shakespeare’s rabble cries for Laertes as king, forgetting antiquity and custom74. Goethe’s carpenter blames idle, hungry vagabonds for riots that bring misery on honest men75. Yet some risings are dramatised with sympathy. In Beaumont and Fletcher the citizens rise to rescue the wronged Philaster76. Schiller’s Swiss peasants plan to storm the castles on a single day77 and tear down the tyrant’s keep78.
Here the central question becomes unavoidable: may a people lawfully overthrow its rulers? Rousseau says that a despot who rules only by force may be overthrown by force79. Schiller’s Tell argues that when justice fails, nature’s primal state returns and the sword becomes the last resort80. The Declaration of Independence holds that a long train of abuses makes it the people’s right and duty to throw off government81, and Burns praises injured nations that dare to overthrow tyrants82. Mill notes that resistance was once generally held justifiable when rulers infringed political liberties83. Emerson finds the right of revolution at the bottom of the English charter-box84. Others deny or narrowly confine that right. Hobbes holds that seizing sovereignty by rebellion is against reason, since success cannot be expected and the example teaches others to do the same85. Descartes thinks a private person should not reform a state by overturning it86. Dryden warns that every insurrection pretends to be a reformation87. Penn grants that people will resist when things go too far, but adds that the remedy is often worse88. Even Rousseau concedes that a standing right to dispose of rulers would breed endless dissension89.
Burke stakes out a middle ground. Revolution is the last resource of the thinking and the good90, and only supreme necessity can justify it91. Making the extreme remedy a daily diet, however, weakens society’s health92 and wears out the spirit that great occasions require93. Mill, though far more sympathetic, reasons similarly when he dissuades workers from a collision in Hyde Park. Such a collision, he tells them, would be justified only if revolution were both desirable and achievable94.
The American Civil War sharpened the question under a constitution. Lincoln grants a revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow a government95. He would allow it if a majority denied a minority its vital rights, but finds that this is not the present case96. Secession, he argues, is the essence of anarchy, a precedent that will divide the seceders in their turn97. Lowell calls the Southern cause a rebellion against legitimate government that was misrepresented as a defence of democracy98. He holds that a government could not, without abandoning its nature, make rebellion an excuse for revolution99.
The French Revolution focuses the whole controversy. Burke calls it the most astonishing event in the world, a chaos of levity and ferocity100. The French, he argues, despised their past instead of reviving ancient privileges101. They rebelled against a mild and lawful monarch more furiously than others had against usurpers102. Their Assembly was able to destroy but not to construct103, and he insists that the real skill lies in preserving while reforming104. He paints the October days, the invasion of the queen’s chamber and the procession of captives to Paris105,106, and he laments the loss of loyalty that they signified107. He grants that the Assembly may have done some good, but holds that the same reforms were possible without revolution108, and that the instructions of 1789 had asked only for reform109.
England’s Revolution of 1688, Burke contends, was a limited correction that preserved the hereditary principle110. It was undertaken from grave necessity, and its framers meant it to be the parent of settlement, not of future revolutions111. France therefore did not follow English example112. His most penetrating argument concerns how revolution undermines itself. The Assembly taught equality and let murder go unpunished, and so taught its soldiers disloyalty113. Peasants applied the rights of man to refuse their rents, and the Assembly answered with troops114. In general it destroyed the opinions that support all government and was left to rule by force115,116. Burke also fears contagion, likening the danger to a fire in a neighbour’s house117. In his later letter he warns that revolutionary insurrection consumes the great as well as the small118.
Other judgments soften or complicate Burke’s. Goethe’s exile recalls the hopeful dawn of liberty trees119, then its decay into a generation fighting for plunder and dominion120. Mazzini nonetheless faults Goethe as a cold spectator of the Revolution121. Mill was seized by its history122 and given a new existence by the revolution of July123. He reads the excesses of 1789 as an outbreak against monarchical and aristocratic despotism124. Lowell answers Burke from another side, arguing that the French governing classes’ neglect of duty brought the guillotine, since unreasonable demands arise only when reasonable ones are denied125. Carlyle draws the lesson that failed constitutions show the limits of mechanical remedies126. Emerson trusts the English not to arrive at desperate revolution127.
What remains open is whether revolution can ever be clean. Schiller holds that a revolution in a state is harmless only if an aesthetic character prevails, and he thinks the revolutionary hope of his day vain128,129. Emerson says only the law of love and justice can effect a clean revolution130, and he notes that when an excluded majority kills the excluding minority, a new class simply rises to the top131. Channing hopes Providence will work by gradual change rather than by the fearful revolutions it has used before132. These writers mostly agree that tyranny may forfeit obedience. They divide over who should judge when that point has come, and whether the overthrow, once begun, can be kept from devouring its own principles.
Introductory essay written by Claude Opus 5.5 from the outline and the notes on every passage below; quotations are checked against this edition.
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