Today was a dual anniversary – the 221st anniversary of the birth of (European) Australia and the 250th anniversary of the birth of Robbie Burns.

The two are related. Burns was a fierce advocate of Enlightenment principles and the fight for the rights of citizens against the arrogated and entrenched power of aristocracy, royalty and privilege. The result of the fight of which he was a part is the democracy which we enjoy here in Australia and in all other liberal democracies.

If we want to keep our freedoms and our rights we need to remember how very recently that fight was fought and how many try to subvert them and take ownership of them and even simply fail to understand them – most recently, in this country, various members and operatives of the Howard government (Ruddock, Andrews, Keelty for instance) and even of the NSW Iemma government; in the US, Bush, Cheney, Gonzalez, Ashcroft, Card. The appalling Yoo of course.

As we mentioned in a previous post,

“ Burns himself could have been transported to Botany Bay, as fellow Scots Thomas Muir, Thomas Palmer and William Skirving were in 1794.

Muir escaped in 1796 on an American ship which had been sent to rescue him. He fled to France, still in the midst of its Revolution. America had only recently won its own independence from Britain.

In France Muir worked with the famous Thomas Paine who had agitated for American Independence. Paine famously wrote “Common Sense” and “The Rights of Man – a guide to the ideas of the Enlightenment”.

(Muir had been a student of John Millar, Scottish philosopher and historian and author of “The Origin of the Distinction of Ranks; or, An Inquiry into the Circumstances which give rise to Influence and Authority in the Different Members of Society [1771]¹). ”

According to Wikipedia,

“ The Scottish Enlightenment was … characterised by an outpouring of intellectual and scientific accomplishments…

Sharing the humanist and rationalist outlook of the European Enlightenment of the same time period, the thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment asserted the fundamental importance of human reason combined with a rejection of any authority which could not be justified by reason…The Scottish Enlightenment had effects far beyond Scotland itself, not only because of the esteem in which Scottish achievements were held in Europe and elsewhere, but also because its ideas and attitudes were carried across the Atlantic as part of the Scottish diaspora which had its beginnings in that same era.

Here is the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen

1. Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may be founded only upon the general good.

 

2. The aim of all political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression.

 

3. The principle of all sovereignty resides essentially in the nation. No body nor individual may exercise any authority which does not proceed directly from the nation.

 

4. Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else; hence the exercise of the natural rights of each man has no limits except those which assure to the other members of the society the enjoyment of the same rights. These limits can only be determined by law.

 

5. Law can only prohibit such actions as are hurtful to society. Nothing may be prevented which is not forbidden by law, and no one may be forced to do anything not provided for by law.

 

6. Law is the expression of the general will. Every citizen has a right to participate personally, or through his representative, in its foundation. It must be the same for all, whether it protects or punishes. All citizens, being equal in the eyes of the law, are equally eligible to all dignities and to all public positions and occupations, according to their abilities, and without distinction except that of their virtues and talents

 

7. No person shall be accused, arrested, or imprisoned except in the cases and according to the forms prescribed by law. Any one soliciting, transmitting, executing, or causing to be executed, any arbitrary order, shall be punished. But any citizen summoned or arrested in virtue of the law shall submit without delay, as resistance constitutes an offense.

 

8. The law shall provide for such punishments only as are strictly and obviously necessary, and no one shall suffer punishment except it be legally inflicted in virtue of a law passed and promulgated before the commission of the offense.

 

9. As all persons are held innocent until they shall have been declared guilty, if arrest shall be deemed indispensable, all harshness not essential to the securing of the prisoner’s person shall be severely repressed by law.

 

10. No one shall be disquieted on account of his opinions, including his religious views, provided their manifestation does not disturb the public order established by law.

 

11. The free communication of ideas and opinions is one of the most precious of the rights of man. Every citizen may, accordingly, speak, write, and print with freedom, but shall be responsible for such abuses of this freedom as shall be defined by law.

 

12. The security of the rights of man and of the citizen requires public military forces. These forces are, therefore, established for the good of all and not for the personal advantage of those to whom they shall be intrusted.

 

13. A common contribution is essential for the maintenance of the public forces and for the cost of administration. This should be equitably distributed among all the citizens in proportion to their means.

 

14. All the citizens have a right to decide, either personally or by their representatives, as to the necessity of the public contribution; to grant this freely; to know to what uses it is put; and to fix the proportion, the mode of assessment and of collection and the duration of the taxes.

 

15. Society has the right to require of every public agent an account of his administration.

16. A society in which the observance of the law is not assured, nor the separation of powers defined, has no constitution at all.

 

17. Since property is an inviolable and sacred right, no one shall be deprived thereof except where public necessity, legally determined, shall clearly demand it, and then only on condition that the owner shall have been previously and equitably indemnified.

Not a bad start.

Robbie Burns put it in a nutshell:

To crouch in the train of mere stupid wealth and greatness . . .

I hold to be prostitution in anyone that is not born a slave. 

Happy Birthday Robbie. (And colonial Australia)