Mary Wollstonecraft

by Elizabeth Robins Pennell

A sermon preached by Dr. Richard Price was the immediate reason which moved Burke to write the “Reflections.” The Revolutionists were in the habit of meeting every 4th of November, the anniversary of the arrival of the Prince of Orange in England, to commemorate the Revolution of 1688. Dr. Price was, in 1789, the orator of the day. He, on this occasion, expressed his warm approbation of the actions of the French Republicans, in which sentiment he was warmly seconded by all the other members of the society. Burke seized upon these demonstrations as a pretext for expounding his own views upon the proceedings in France. The sermon and orations were really not of enough importance to evoke the long essay with which he favored them. But though he began by denouncing the English Revolutionists in particular, the subject so inflamed him that before he had finished, he had written without restraint his opinion of the social struggle of the French people, and given his definition of the word Liberty, then in everybody’s mouth. As he wrote, news came pouring into England of later political developments in France which increased instead of lessening his hatred and distrust of the Revolution. It was a year before he had finished his work, and it had then grown into a lengthy and elaborate treatise.

The “Reflections” gives a careful exposition of the errors of the French Republican party, and the shortcomings of the National Assembly; and, to add to this the force of antithesis, it extols the merits and virtues of the English Constitution. Furthermore, it points out the evil consequences which must follow the realization of the French attempts at reform. But the real question at issue is the nature of the rights of men. It was to gain for their countrymen the justice which they thought their due, that the revolutionary leaders curtailed the power of the king, lowered the nobility, and disgraced the clergy. If it could be proved that their conception of human justice was wholly wrong, the very foundation of their political structure would be destroyed. Burke’s arguments, therefore, are all intended to achieve this end.

In her detestation of his insensibility to the natural equality of mankind, Mary was too impatient to consider the minor points of his reasoning. She announces in her Advertisement that she intends to confine her strictures, in a great measure, to the grand principles at which he levels his ingenious arguments. Her object, therefore, as well as Burke’s, is to demonstrate what are the rights of men, but she reasons from a very different stand-point. Burke defends the claims of those who inherit rights from long generations of ancestors; Mary cries aloud in defence of men whose one inheritance is the deprivation of all rights. Burke is moved by the misery of a Marie Antoinette, shorn of her greatness; Mary, by the wretchedness of the poor peasant woman who has never possessed even its shadow. The former knows no birthright for individuals save that which results from the prescription of centuries; the latter contends that every man has a right, as a human being, to “such a degree of liberty, civil and religious, as is compatible with the liberty of the other individuals with whom he is united in social compact.” Burke asserts that the present rights of man cannot be decided by reason alone, since they are founded on laws and customs long established. But Mary asks, How far back are we to go to discover their first foundation? Is it in England to the reign of Richard II., whose incapacity rendered him a mere cipher in the hands of the Barons; or to that of Edward III., whose need for money forced him to concede certain privileges to the commons? Is social slavery to be encouraged because it was established in semi-barbarous days? Does Burke, she continues,—

“... recommend night as the fittest time to analyze a ray of light?

“Are we to seek for the rights of men in the ages when a few marks were the only penalty imposed for the life of a man, and death for death when the property of the rich was touched?—when—I blush to discover the depravity of our nature—a deer was killed! Are these the laws that it is natural to love, and sacrilegious to invade? Were the rights of men understood when the law authorized or tolerated murder?—or is power and right the same?”

Burke’s contempt for the poor, which Mary thought the most conspicuous feature of his treatise, was the chief cause of her indignation. She could not endure silently his admonitions to the laboring class to respect the property which they could not possess, and his exhortations to them to find their consolation for ill-rewarded labor in the “final proportions of eternal justice.” “It is, sir, possible,” she tells him with some dignity, “to render the poor happier in this world, without depriving them of the consolation which you gratuitously grant them in the next.” To her mind, the oppression which the lower classes had endured for ages, until they had become in the end beings scarcely above the brutes, made the losses of the French nobility and clergy seem by comparison very insignificant evils. The horrors of the 6th of October, the discomforts and degradation of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette, and the destitution to which many French refugees had been reduced, blinded Burke to the long-suffering of the multitude which now rendered the distress of the few imperative. But Mary’s feelings were all stirred in the opposite cause.

“What,” she asks in righteous indignation,—“what were the outrages of the day to these continual miseries? Let those sorrows hide their diminished heads before the tremendous mountain of woe that thus defaces our globe! Man preys on man, and you mourn for the idle tapestry that decorated a Gothic pile, and the dronish bell that summoned the fat priest to prayer. You mourn for the empty pageant of a name, when slavery flaps her wing, and the sick heart retires to die in lonely wilds, far from the abodes of man. Did the pangs you felt for insulted nobility, the anguish which rent your heart when the gorgeous robes were torn off the idol human weakness had set up, deserve to be compared with the long-drawn sigh of melancholy reflection, when misery and vice thus seem to haunt our steps, and swim on the top of every cheering prospect? Why is our fancy to be appalled by terrific perspectives of a hell beyond the grave? Hell stalks abroad: the lash resounds on a slave’s naked sides; and the sick wretch, who can no longer earn the sour bread of unremitting labor, steals to a ditch to bid the world a long good-night, or, neglected in some ostentatious hospital, breathes its last amidst the laugh of mercenary attendants.”

Occasionally Mary interrupts the main drift of her “Letter” to refute some of the incidental statements in the “Reflections.” But in doing this she is more eager to show the evils of English political and social laws, which Burke praises so unreservedly, than to prove that many existed in the old French government, a fact which he obstinately refuses to recognize. This may have been because she then knew little more than Burke of the real state of affairs in France, and would not take the time to collect her proofs. This is very likely, for the chief fault of her “Letter” is undue haste in its composition. It was written on the spur of the moment, and is without the method indispensable to such a work. There is no order in the arguments advanced, and too often reasoning gives place to exhortation and meditation. Another serious error is the personal abuse with which her “Letter” abounds. She treats Burke in the very same manner with which she reproves him for treating Dr. Price. Instead of confining herself to denunciation of his views, she attacks his character, she accuses him of vanity and susceptibility to the charms of rank, of insincerity and affectation. She calls him a slave of impulse, and tells him he is too full of himself, and even compares his love for the English Constitution to the brutal affection of weakness built on blind, indolent tenderness, rather than on rational grounds. Sometimes she grows eloquent in her sarcasm.

“... On what principle you, sir,” she observes, “can justify the Reformation, which tore up by the roots an old establishment, I cannot guess,—but I beg your pardon, perhaps you do not wish to justify it, and have some mental reservation to excuse you to yourself, for not openly avowing your reverence. Or, to go further back, had you been a Jew, you must have joined in the cry, ‘Crucify him! Crucify him!’ The promulgator of a new doctrine, and the violator of old laws and customs, that did not, like ours, melt into darkness and ignorance, but rested on Divine authority, must have been a dangerous innovator in your eyes, particularly if you had not been informed that the Carpenter’s Son was of the stock and lineage of David.”

But vituperation is not argument, and abuse proves nothing. This is a fault, however, into which youth readily falls. Mary was young when she wrote the “Vindication of the Rights of Man,” and feeling was still too strong to be forgotten in calm discussion. It was a mistake, too, to dwell, as she did, on the inconsistency between Burke’s earlier and present policy. This was a powerful weapon against him at the time, but posterity has recognized the consistency which, in reality, underlay his seemingly diverse political creeds. Besides, the demonstration that sentiments in the “Reflections” were at variance with others expressed some years previously, did not prove them to be unsound.