On Revolution

The dramatic difference in outcome between the French and American Revolutions stems from the fact that, in the French Revolution, the people “were neither organized nor constituted” (171). Under the old regime, where bodies such as parliaments and estates existed, their membership had been determined by hereditary privilege, “not […] mutual promises” (171), and dominated by private interests.

When the colonies won independence from the British king and parliament, the colonial governors were removed but the legislative assemblies remained, and the people still felt bound by their own various agreements. When the French revolutionists insisted that “all power resides in the people,” they conceived of power as “a ‘natural’ force whose source and origin lay outside the political realm” (171). In other words, they conflated power with violence, whereas the Americans understood power as springing from reciprocity and mutuality. The Americans also understood that although power springs from below—i.e., it derives from the citizens and their mutual promises—the people cannot also be the “higher law” that sanctions their own law-making power.

In France, by contrast, the king’s will was replaced by the people’s will, so it too was a law unto itself. In practice, this resulted in constantly-changing laws. Robespierre recognized that he needed “an ever-present transcendent source of authority” to give “some permanence and stability to the