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The Origin and Principles of the American Revolution, Compared with the Origin and Principles of the French Revolution. Friedrich Gentz
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Winston Churchill called this the first world war, a war fought not in one part of the world but in both hemispheres. It was fought between the European powers over territorial gains in the colonies and over predominance in Europe.
France’s support for the American Revolution in the aftermath of this war between 1763 and 1788 produced mixed results for France herself, even though it helped to bring about the separation of the colonies from the British motherland. In spite of securing American independence, France was unable to extract considerable material gains from the American War of Independence. Rather the costs of fighting damaged the French national finances and contributed to the coming of the French Revolution.
Gentz writes at the end of his essay that he had set himself the goal of investigating the two world revolutions according to four principal points of view, “with regard to the lawfulness of the origin, character of conduct, quality of the object, and compass of resistance.” (p. 93)
Can we judge unique historical events, such as these great revolutions, on the basis of general principles? Revolution is a generic term. Revolutions follow a scheme of actions of the same type. To revolutionize is to follow a pattern of action and to respond at the same time to the particular historical situation. Like any actions, revolutions must be judged by the circumstances preceding their beginning, by their origin. They must be judged by the character and quality in which they are conducted and carried through, by the conduct of the revolutionaries. They must further be judged by the quality of their goals, that is, by the revolutionary intention, and they must finally be judged by the extent of resistance or support they receive from the nation. In every action, the goal or intention is the beginning, and the realization of the goal is the consummation of the action. An action must be judged by the circumstances that set it in motion, by its origin. It must further be judged by how the action is conducted, and finally by its success or failure. Revolutions are, of course, not only intentional actions but also events in which the acting persons are often driven by dynamics outside of their control. But revolutions are also political actions that can be judged as such. Gentz intended to judge the two revolutions as political actions and as historical events.
The North American colonies found themselves in an odd position when the conflict with Britain started, both inside and outside their motherland. They were required to pay taxes, but they had no voice in how those taxes were used. They were subjects of the British crown, yet had no seats in the British Parliament. They had to accept a British monopoly in trade with the colonies but could not export their own products to Britain.
Gentz points out the paradox of an American tax revenue to be paid for use only in Britain. This resembles the inconsistency of restricting the North American colonies to buying only British wares. Gentz compares Britain’s trade monopoly in the colonies to a tax levied on North America, and he quotes the Second Continental Congress of the United States, which called the monopoly “the heaviest of all contributions.” Gentz emphasizes the link between the impulse toward political control over a colony and the impulse to market control, limiting access to the market only to the motherland. It is inherent to being a colony that the motherland has a monopoly of trade and that the colony wishes to change this situation. Gentz clearly perceives the limits to the legitimacy of the colonial relationship: “The relation between a colony and the mother country is one of those, which will not bear a strong elucidation.” (p. 19) The American Revolution brought to an end a strained and, from a natural-right point of view, an awkward relationship. Since there was little explicit legal definition of the relationship between the colonies and the motherland, the American Revolution did not have to break many laws. The colonies just applied to themselves such constitutional principles as parliamentary representation, which the motherland had applied to itself only.
The French Revolution acted within an elaborate, valid system of law under a king who was willing to enact constitutional reform. The revolution broke the law and killed the king. The French breach of law was far more extensive and serious than the colonial breach of law. In the end, the two revolutions are judged according to which broke more “real right.” It is a breach of real right if one counters resistance to political action by violence that is out of proportion to that resistance. Violence must be minimized in political action. The French Revolution (and to an even greater extent the Russian Revolution) required an enormous degree of violence, with many victims. (It is an interesting question whether the National Socialist movement in Nazi Germany was a revolutionary movement, in this sense.) If a revolution needs to kill so many people to overcome the population’s resistance, then by these lights, it cannot be legitimate, since its means are out of proportion with its goals. Gentz’s criteria for judging eighteenth-century revolutions are even more applicable to the revolutions of the twentieth century.
The latest revolutions of our time, in the Czech Republic and East Germany in 1989, two hundred years after the French Revolution, have been called the Velvet Revolution and the Peaceful Revolution, respectively. Were they revolutions? Some have claimed that they were not true revolutions but rather implosions of two states of the former Warsaw Pact. Rosenstock-Huessy called revolutions like that semirevolutions (Halbrevolutionen).1
Gentz is a conservative and classical liberal. Like other conservatives, he does not like revolutions and does not believe in them, since he is convinced that the social world requires continuity and tradition. Conservatives also abhor the use of political violence for radical social change. In the end, Gentz comes to the conclusion that the American Revolution was a legitimate revolution, since it was not really a revolution. Its goal was to establish a constitutional regime that was in accordance with the British tradition of constitutional principles. The American Revolution did not unleash large-scale violence. It had clearly defined and limited goals. It finished revolutionalizing when these goals were reached. In general it succeeded in maintaining civilized conduct during its political fighting and military warfare. It did not aim at enforcing its principles on other nations.
All this cannot be said, according to Gentz, about the French Revolution: It used enormous violence. It faced very great internal resistance, which was overcome only by ruthless repression. (The people of Paris used to say that Robespierre was trying to reduce the population of the French Republic to one-half its pre-revolutionary numbers.) The goals or objectives of the French Revolution became more and more extensive and changed unpredictably under the varying influence of the different revolutionary factions. The French Revolution did not maintain good conduct. It did not come to an end by itself but was ended only by the ascent of Napoleon. Finally, it did try to enforce its principles on other nations.
Gentz is not only critical of the origins and historical conduct but also of the pivotal political ideas of the French Revolution. He considers the declaration of natural and unalienable rights of man as well as the idea of popular sovereignty to be superfluous rhetoric in the American Revolution and a dangerous illusion in the French Revolution. Although the French Revolution took over these two ideas from the American Revolution, through Jefferson’s advice to Lafayette, these concepts were effective only in the French Revolution, according to Gentz, producing tremendous philosophical error, political disaster, and human misery.
The so-called rights of man are erroneous, Gentz believes, if they are used as an abstract claim against the concrete and real right. There is no right of man outside of the real right of the state. The French Revolution was an assault on the “real right” of states in the name of abstract and fictive revolutionary principles. If the French Republic absolved the subjects of the European states of their duty of obedience to their lawful governments, it created, according to Gentz, a situation like that during the religious wars, when various sides claimed to have the divine right to absolve their believers of their duty of obedience as citizens or subjects.
There is also no abstract sovereignty of the people, because the law is above any sovereign except God, and even God must be thought of as following the right He has set in place. The people or the nation cannot therefore simply call into being a law based on what it wills at any given time, as the French revolutionaries tried to do. The American Revolution and, following from it, the Constitution of the United States also follow the idea of popular sovereignty, but the right is constituted