Robert Burns and Women's Rights

The 25th of January is the birthday of Scottish poet Robert Burns (1759-1796). On the evening of that day, millions of his fans around the world gather for a "Burns' Supper" in his honor. After a meal of haggis, neeps, and tatties* they drink a toast of whisky to "The Bard" and listen to some of his poems. At midnight on January 1, much of the world sings "Auld Lang Syne," the song based on Burns' poem of that name. They pledge to "take a cup o' kindness yet, for auld lang syne!" 

Kindness appears in short supply around the world these days, and the supply is dwindling as rapidly as the number of eggs in Trump's USA. I wonder how many MAGAts sang those words about kindness this New Years with sincerity. 

But kindness, however crucial, is not my main theme here. It is human rights. Burns was a staunch defender of the rights of women as well as men. He wasn't always sensitive to that need. He was something of a womanizer, to put it bluntly. 

Before he became famous for his poetry, he had decided to take a job as an overseer and bookkeeper on a Jamaican sugar plantation, which was worked by enslaved Africans. He changed plans after his book of poetry was published to great acclaim in 1786. It is not clear if he ever denounced African slavery, at least directly. But he denounced injustice and inequality, notably in  "A Man's a Man for a' That."

For a few years after the publication of his book, Burns was the toast of Edinburgh, mingling with and lionized by Scotland's elite. That changed after the French Revolution began in 1789. Like many young men in Europe, he supported that revolution, and the earlier American one. The Scottish elite did not, and most of them distanced themselves from the radical Burns. He left Edinburgh and returned to farm near Dumfries, close to his birthplace. He married and became an exciseman (collector of customs duties), a government job that may have restrained his political radicalism. 

In 1792, Burns wrote "The Rights Of Women." The first stanza sets the tone:

While Europe's eye is fixed on mighty things,

The fate of empires and the fall of Kings;

While quacks of State must each produce his plan, 

And even children lisp the Rights of Man;

Amid this mighty fuss just let me mention,

The Rights of Woman merit some attention.

The poem was highly topical. Thomas Paine had just published The Rights of Man and Mary Wollstonecraft A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. These works alarmed and horrified the elites of Britain and much of Europe. By echoing their rhetoric in poetry, Burns marked himself as suspect in their eyes. 

The last stanza of the poem quoted approvingly a rallying cry of the French revolutionaries, "ca ira!" ("it will be fine") and seemed to place the "Majesty of Woman" above that of kings. 

By today's standards, Burns' list of women's rights may seem rather conservative. The rights he demanded were not political or even legal. They included protection, decorum (good manners), admiration and respect for women's opinions and influence. Good romantic that he was, Burns argued that the power of women lay in their ability to soften the harsher aspects of man's nature. 

All that may sound old-fashioned and anti-feminist, and certainly the sentiments were seized on by Victorian conservatives as an argument against women's suffrage and legal rights. But juxtapose Burns' praise of women to MAGAt statements and behavior toward women, and the difference is stark. Burns may have been something of a womanizer, but he never claimed things like "Your body, my choice." 

On this January 25, let's "take a cup of kindness" and have a wee dram in honor of "Rabbie" Burns, recently voted "The Greatest Scot." He narrowly beat out William Wallace, "Braveheart." 

*Neeps are turnips, tatties are potatoes.

PS. The first Burns Supper took place in Greenock, the town where I was born, on January 29th, 1801, which the organizers mistakenly though to be his birthday. It was later changed to the correct date of January 25th and has been held every year since on that day.

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On the Pleasure of Hating, by William Hazlitt

In 1826 the English writer William Hazlitt (1778-1830) wrote an essay called "On the Pleasure of Hating." Today considered one of the great British critics and essayists, his aim in this work was to explain the power of hate as an emotion, why so many people find satisfaction in hating others. Although much of the essay relates to Hazlitt's time and personal relationships, his analysis of hatred remains relevant to the present, given the upsurge of hate and cruelty across the planet. 

[Image: William Hazlitt, Self-portrait, from c. 1802]

At the outset, it is important to note that as a young man, Hazlitt was convinced of the benevolence of human nature. By the 1820s, he had rejected that belief. In the essay, Hazlitt argues that hatred is built into our nature. We need to have something to hate to maintain "our  thought and action." The human mind hankers after evil and "takes a perverse, but a fortunate delight in mischief, since it is a never-failing source of satisfaction." In contrast, pure good is boring. It lacks "variety and spirit." 

Perhaps for this reason, he continued, old friends often begin to hate one another as the years pass by. People who once delighted us begin to bore or annoy us. Hazlitt confesses that he no longer is on good terms with close friends of the past, who included many of the literary lights of the day, such as Wordsworth and Coleridge. His staunch admiration for the cause of liberty created friction with friends who had become more conservative due to the French Revolution. They might (and did) blame his bad temper, but he countered that they fell out with each other as well.  

The worst effects of hating, Hazlitt argued, arise in relation to religion and politics. "The pleasure of hating," is "like a poisonous mineral." It perverts religion, turning it into anger and bigotry. Virtue becomes "a narrow, jealous, inquisitorial watchfulness over the actions and motives of others." It turns "the different sects, creeds, doctrines in religion" into excuses "for men to wrangle, to quarrel, to tear one another in pieces." 

Hatred "makes patriotism an excuse for carrying fire, pestilence, and famine into other lands." Love of country does not inspire any friendly feeling or disposition to help one's countrymen. It means only hatred for the inhabitants "of any other country we happen to be at war with for the time." Here, Hazlitt was thinking of Britain's wars against the French in particular. 

People claim to be "patriots and friends of freedom," but the world is divided into two types: tyrants and slaves who support the efforts of kings to forge "chains of despotism and superstition." The words and actions of fools and knaves are hailed as "public spiritedness."  

If humanity truly desired right to prevail, "they might have had it long ago." But "they are prone to mischief." In private life, "hypocrisy, servility, selfishness, folly, and impudence succeed." Meanwhile, "modesty shrinks from the encounter, and merit is trodden under foot." 

Hazlitt then turns to and on himself. He confesses to having witnessed and analyzed human "meanness, spite, cowardice;" to have seen people's lack of feeling and concern for others; to have observed our self-ignorance and our tendency to prefer "custom" over "excellence." 

All these failings lead to social "infamy," to disgraceful and appalling behavior. In his own case, they have led to disillusion. "I have been mistaken in my public and private hopes, calculating others from myself, and calculating wrong; always disappointed where I placed most reliance; the dupe of friendship, and the fool of love." He asks, has all this not given him reason "to hate and despise myself? Indeed I do; and chiefly for not having hated and despised the world enough."

Perhaps these were the words of a bitter old man, who spent his last years in poverty. His two marriages had failed. He found it difficult to make a living due to his radical ideas and critiques of influential people. Or perhaps he had discovered an inconvenient truth about human nature, one that helps explain the failure of "the acme of Creation" to establish a world of peace and justice. 

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Tom Paine: The Patriot America Rejected

The triumph of Trump and his MAGA movement of faux patriots tells me it is time to look once again at the career of someone who was a true patriot and friend of mankind, who labored for human rights instead of against them: Thomas Paine.

Poor Tom Paine. Rejected by American Patriots he served so well for being too radical, nearly guillotined by French revolutionaries for being too conservative, he died poor and forgotten in an America he helped to create. Ironically, the country that reveres his memory most is the one he rebelled against: Great Britain.

Paine was born in Thetford, England January 29, 1737. He trained in the same trade as his Quaker father, as a maker of rope stays used on sailing ships (not corset stays as some detractors claimed). At various times he also worked as an excise officer and schoolteacher.

In 1768 he was appointed an excise officer in Lewes, in Sussex, a town with a strong republican tradition. He lived in the 15^th century Bull House.

Paine soon became involved in the town government of Lewes and often held forth on politics at the White Hart Inn, now Hotel. I stayed here on my trip to Lewes a few years ago.

During his years in Lewes, Paine became increasingly anti-monarchical and anti-aristocratic, sentiments he took to America in the autumn of 1774. He emigrated at the suggestion by Benjamin Franklin, then representing colonial interests in Britain. Paine arrived in Philadelphia to find the thirteen colonies on the verge of revolt against British rule. He quickly became involved in politics, and surged to fame with the publication of his immensely popular pamphlet Common Sense in January 1776.

In Common Sense, Paine argued that independence was just that. He avoided the formal, scholarly political discourse of the day, writing in an easy to read, punchy style that rendered politics intelligible to the average reader. The work converted many ordinary Americans to the idea of independence.

At the end of 1776, Paine published a pamphlet series The American Crisis, designed to inspire sacrifice in the struggle for independence. It opens with some of the most famous words ever written: “These are the times that try men’s souls.” Washington had it read aloud to his soldiers.

During the War for Independence, Paine served the revolutionary government in various capacities. It was a bumpy time for him, as he clashed with some of his fellow revolutionaries, accusing them, with some reason, of corruption.

Perhaps Paine’s most important contribution to the revolutionary cause was his mission to France in 1781, with John Laurens of South Carolina. The two men shared something besides their revolutionary fervor: they opposed slavery. Laurens was killed in one of the last battles of the war.

Paine and Laurens succeeded in gaining funds and a French commitment to send a fleet and army to America later that year. The arrival of the French during Washington’s Siege of Yorktown, Virginia played a crucial role in bringing about the surrender of British forces under Lord Cornwallis in October.

Peace talks began a few months after Yorktown, and a treaty recognizing American independence was finalized in 1783.

Paine returned to England in 1787 to pursue business projects. He soon became involved in the Revolution that began in France in 1789. In 1791, he wrote a long defense of the French Revolution, The Rights of Man. It sold over a million copies, to the horror of British conservatives. 

James Gillray's cartoon, below, attacks Paine as he tightens violently Britannia's corset, a reference to his supposed occupation as a corset staymaker.

A second volume of The Rights of Man, in 1792, argued for a comprehensive program of universal, free education and social security. The book helped inspire radical movements, as well as major government efforts to suppress them and the book's author.

Paine went to France to avoid arrest, and became involved in the radical phase of the revolution. He was elected to the National Convention. When Louis XVI was tried for treason in 1792, Paine, who opposed capital punishment, voted against execution. 

Paine's plea to spare the king, although unsuccessful, angered radical Jacobins who soon came to power and began the Reign of Terror. They arrested Paine. He spent ten months in prison and narrowly avoided being guillotined. After his release, he criticized President Washington and other American leaders for not helping him.

In the late 1790s, Paine supported Napoleon, but turned against him when his authoritarian aims became clear. At the invitation of President Jefferson, Paine returned to the United States by 1803. 

Paine's welcome was not warm, partly because of his scathing criticisms of Washington and other American leaders. His opposition to slavery also alienated many people. And another work he wrote in installments during these years, The Age of Reason, attacked Christianity. 

The Age of Reason sold well, but it outraged many people, especially in the new United States, where a great evangelical revival was underway. Paine died impoverished and nearly friendless in New York in 1809. Only six people came to his funeral. Two of them black freedmen. A widely reprinted obituary stated that he “did some good, but much harm.”

In 1819 William Cobbett, a British radical, took Paine’s remains back to England for a proper burial. (image)

The burial apparently never happened and the ultimate disposal of Paine’s remains is unknown. 

During the 19^th century, Paine and his works helped inspire progressive movements in Britain and America. He is remembered fondly in the town of Lewes, Sussex. There is even a Rights of Man pub. Drop in for a pint or two when in town and toast the memory of Tom Paine, a true friend to mankind.

Lewes, Sussex