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The Rights of Man

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The Rights of Man is a riposte to Edmund Burke's criticism of the French Revolution. Its message is the superiority of reason, in the form of Republican government armed with the Declaration of the Rights of Man, over despotism which holds populations in ignorance. With the American and French revolutions fresh in his mind, Paine was writing in a world on the threshold of freedom and that comes through in his forceful and forthright style. That said, and most important for the reader to appreciate, much of what he has to say still applies today. Paine in scathing in his critique of hereditary monarchy and privilege. He says "the idea of hereditary legislation is.......as absurd as an hereditary mathematician, or an hereditary wise man." He rejects the notion of government laws being justified by tradition and therefore irrevocable. His argument against Burke's defence of the 1688 revolution in England is perhaps the best in the book. Paine argues that the only thing that is truly hereditary is the Rights of Man : "The Rights of men in society, are neither devisable, nor transferrable, nor annihilable, but descendable only." The book is a superb polemic when both understood in its historical context and applied to world politics today. His arguments for reform of the House of Lords strike a particularly pertinent note. He expresses liberal doctrines that many people take for granted but in our own genocidal times Paine reminds us that many of the topics that impassioned him should continue to impassion everyone with an interest in humanity. The style of the writing may put off a few as many themes disappear and reappear throughout the book instead of being dealt with in a coherant whole. The fact that it was written in two parts and that he is one of the greatest pamphleteers of modern times should compensate for this minor irritation.

Thomas Paine's "Rights of Man" is truly a classic defense of self government and reprsentative republicanism. Paine copmletely demolishes Edmund Burke's defense of aristocracy and monarchy as outmoded and absurd institiutions. Paine shows the immorality of monarchy and the plunder that it commits on it's own people through high taxes,unjust property laws,and priveleges for the nobility. Paine shows the virtues a representative system has over the monarchial form. He denounces aristocracy and monarchy as "frauds" and based upon tyranny. The first review by Will Murphy critsizing Paine as a sort of statist is way off the mark. Paine did recommend many ideals of the welfare state. It must be remembered he was speaking to an age where a large wealthy aristocracy ruled alongside the monarch, living in luxury off the high taxes drained from the middle, lower and working classes. Paine was one of the formost defenders of freethought in religion,speech, and ideas.To imply Paine was a sort of 18th century fascist is utterly absurd and ahistorical. Paine was not an enemy of property, just an enemy of aristocracy,who in his day did not obtain property by hard work. Usually property rights in monarchial nations were written to favor the wealthy and powerful, and grant them priveleges at the expense of the populace. Paine completely destroys the ideal that a chosen few were meant or ordained by God to rule. If you love freedom, you can't go wrong with the "Rights of Man".

"Rights of Man" (1791-92) is Thomas Paine's famous response to Edmund Burke's "Reflections on the Revolution of France" (1790). Although it helps have read Burke's essay, a general background is sufficient to understand and appreciate Paine's basic and groundbreaking arguments.

Paine and Burke were originally allies; Burke not only supported self-rule for the American colonies, he also supported the emancipation of the House of Commons from monarchical control and the independence of both Ireland and India. Many of his allies, then, were bewildered by his fervent opposition to the French Revolution; Burke drew the line between territorial autonomy from a distant or aloof government and the total overthrow of existing monarchies and institutions. For Burke, humankind's real enemies were drastic change and "unsocial, uncivil, unconnected chaos," and he proved himself a staunch defender of the status quo, of precedent, and of gradual reform.

Jerry Muller, in his recent--and superb--book "The Mind and the Market" asserts that Burke's denunciation of the French revolution is "the single most influential work of conservative thought published from his day to ours." (This, of course, depends on what one means by "conservative.") Yet Muller and likeminded historians inevitably cherry-pick Burke's more attractive economic and philosophical arguments and foreground Burke's critique, in Muller's words, "of the revolutionary mentality that attempts to create entirely new structures on the basis of rational, abstract principles." (Muller doesn't even mention Paine, much less the example of the United States.) Such a focus inevitably sidesteps Burke's brief for the supremacy of European monarchical institutions and of the landed aristocracy. And that's where Paine comes in.

With his usual acerbic wit and extravagant rhetoric, Paine, in the first part of his treatise, makes mincemeat out of Burke's sillier statements. For example, he finds especially unspeakable Burke's claim that that "the English nation did, at the time of the [1688] Revolution, most solemnly renounce and abdicate [the right of self-rule], for themselves, and for all their posterity for ever." Paine correctly challenges the primacy of a decision made by members of that generation over desires of other generations, questions the right of any generation to surrender the rights of their descendants, and notes that "government is for the living, and not for the dead, it is the living only that has any right in it."

He also chastises the English for a system of hereditary government that virtually guarantees unfettered rule by children, madmen, idiots, and foreign-born pretenders (and he certainly has plenty of examples from which to choose), many of whom led their realms into chaos and terror without the help of radical revolutionaries. And Paine argues that wars would cease with the promotion of democracy and the cessation of the selfish interests of absolutists. His critics rightly respond that the rise of democratic institutions has hardly stopped wars, although one might pose the counterargument that, relatively speaking, democratic governments go to war with each other much less frequently.

In the second part, Paine proposes a radical agenda for an overhaul of the British government. Although his anecdotally based statistics and figures must be viewed with skepticism and a few laughs, the prescience of his proposals is startling: poverty relief, social security, public education, maternity care, homeless shelters, workfare, veteran's benefits, and progressive taxation. His is the agenda of the idealist: "When it shall be said in any country in the world, my poor are happy; neither ignorance nor distress is to be found among them; my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars; the aged are not in want, the taxes are not oppressive . . . when these things can be said, then may that country boast its constitution and its government."

Paine, of course, had the nascent United States to cite in support of his proposals, but he and Burke were debating these matters before the onset of the Jacobin Reign of Terror, which dismayed Paine and seems to have realized Burke's worst fears. Yet, throughout history, for every Robespierre or Lenin, one can find a Mandela or a Walesa; monarchies too were no strangers to upheaval. Paine hardly argued for "mob rule" or even "majority rule"; the French Revolution failed in part because it violated the fundamental tenet that the citizens of each nation have a right to choose whatever rule they please, even "a bad or defective government, . . . so long as the majority to not impose conditions on the minority, different to what they impose on themselves"--a caveat we all should take to heart in today's political climate.

Paine wrote RoM while in France, during the early years of the revolution, in response to an antirevolutionary pamphlet from his previous friend Burke. There is lots of polemics going on, and the crux of the matter is that Burke makes light of The Declaration of the Rights of Man, which was adopted by the French National Assembly in August 1789, after the storm of the Bastille. The Declaration, written by Lafayette with some input by Jefferson, is a brief and concise document. It became the preamble of the constitution of 1791.
Here a shortened version.
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 ... rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression.
3. The principle of all sovereignty resides essentially in the nation. ...
4. Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else; ... 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. ...
7. No person shall be accused, arrested, or imprisoned except in the cases and according to the forms prescribed by law. ...
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. ...all persons are held innocent until they shall have been declared guilty ...
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. ... property is an inviolable and sacred right ...

Paine contrasts this brilliantly utopian text with England's lack of a constitution.
But there is not just the matter of principle, there is also disagreement over matters of fact.
Burke had denied not only the French right to revolt, but also the reason to revolt, as the current holder of the throne was not known to be a despot. Paine's point is that the revolution was not against the king as a person, but against a despotic system, which divided and sub-divided in 1000 steps and acted by deputation. Popper's concept of the `open society' comes to mind. The `declaration' quoted above aims at an open society. That is not a question of the personal quality of an individual ruler.

(I can't help thinking laterally, about a special country, which right now also has a reasonably mild and rational government, within the limits of the system... What is the leader of the revolution over here quoted as having said when asked about the French Revolution? It is too early to tell. Well, that seems to be apocryphal.)

Government, wrote Paine, arises out of 3 sources:
a)superstition (priest craft, think of Islamic or other religious states),
b)power (dictatorships, one party rules), or
c)reason (which i.m.o. is synonym with secular).
Unfortunately we know from history that many cases which started out from reason went into some kind of hybrid state, down the road. Or worse, we see the effect of the `dialectics of enlightenment': reason itself becomes embodied in power and perverts itself.
The order of the day for us, today, is to struggle for the survival of reason in existing governments, or for the growth of reason where it is lacking.

In reading Tom Payne it is best to go right to the horse's mouth. Don't buy a volume with a modern day author's interpretation. Tom expresses himself clearly, logically and in up to date readable language. He needs no interpreter. Read what he has to say for yourself and make your own judgements.
This work is rather amazing when you consider the date that he penned these masterpieces. Don't pay any attention to the right-wing attempts at slurring Tom even today. He made sense in 1776 and his arguments makes sense today. If there were no Tom Paine I doubt if their would be an independent United States today - even George Washington admitted that fact. Tom Paine was simply too outspoken and too honest (and too courageous) for his time - or for today's times for that matter.
If you love history, philosophy, or politics as an American this is a man that you must read.
Tom Paine writing style and ability is "inspirational" to say the least.

Richard Edward Noble - The Hobo Philosopher - Author of:

"Hobo-ing America: A Workingman's Tour of the U.S.A.."

This was required reading for a graduate course in the history of the French Revolution. For Thomas Paine, the eighteenth century was the Age of Enlightenment because for the first time humankind was throwing off the millstones of religious dogmatism and political despotism. Paine essentially believed that the rights of man encompassed, "...all the intellectual rights, or rights of the mind, and also all those rights of acting as an individual for his own comfort and happiness, which are not injurious to the natural rights of others" (Paine, 68).

Paine's Rights of Man was an eloquent yet blistering rebuttal to Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France. Paine got right to the crux of the disagreement he had with Burke when he admonished him for his argument that governmental enactments of previous generations had the force and authority to bind citizens for all time. An example that Burke used was the English Parliament of 1688, which he praised as a model of the type of reform French citizens should emulate. Paine's answer was swift and cutting "Radical Enlightenment" reason. "Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself, in all cases, as the ages and generations which preceded it. The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave, is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies" (41-42). Paine also took Burke to task for his narrow understanding of French socio-political and economic problems leading up to 1789. Unlike Burke, Paine understood that the French Revolution, unlike the others that took place in Europe, was not just a revolt against the king. "Between the monarchy, the parliament, and the church, there was a rivalship of despotism, besides the feudal despotism operating locally, and the ministerial despotism operating everywhere" (48). Thus, what Paine witnessed, Alexis de Tocqueville and Georges Lefebvre observed, agreed with, and commented on, in their history's years later. The institutions that Burke defended in his Reflections, such as the nobility, Church, and monarchial rule, all became "fodder" for Paine's "grist mill" in his defense of France's new constitution.

Paine abhorred the institution of nobility and supported its dissolution for several reasons.
"Because the idea of hereditary legislation is as inconsistent...and absurd as an hereditary mathematician....Because it is continuing the uncivilized principle of governments founded in conquest, and the base idea of man having property over man, and governing him by personal right" (83). No friend to tradition, Paine took Burke to task for defending the notion of, "...hereditary rights, and hereditary succession, and that a Nation has not a right to form a Government for itself" (Paine, 116). Paine defended the French constitution's eradication of tithes to the Catholic Church and it "...hath abolished or renounced Toleration, and Intolerance also, hath established UNIVERSAL RIGHT OF CONSCIENCE" (85). Finally, Paine unleashed a most scathing attack against Burke's suggestion that France should reform its absolutist monarchy into a benign form of constitutional monarchy similar to what Britain enjoyed. "All hereditary government is in its nature tyranny" (172). "It occasionally puts children over men, and the conceits of nonage over wisdom and experience. In short, we cannot conceive a more ridiculous figure of government, than hereditary succession" (173).

Thus, Paine's Radical Enlightenment polemic, which sold more than 200,000 copies throughout Europe, was his reasoned and articulate project towards developing a better world. Consequently, there is no doubt that Paine, whose Radical Enlightenment pen proved to be "mightier than the sword" of despotism both in the American and French Revolutions, understood the importance of the nurturing relationship that Enlightenment philosophes had on the French Revolution. "But all those writings and many others had their weight; and by the different manner in which they treated the subject of government...by their moral maxims and systems of economy, readers of every class met with something to their taste" (Paine, 94).

Recommended reading for anyone interested in political philosophy, enlightenment history, and the French Revolution.

The book is a response to arguments made by Edmond Burke that were critical to the constitution and behavior that resulted from the French revolution. Edmond Burke believed in the English constitution and the structure of the government in Great Britain. Mr. Paine argued the British did not have a constitution, the government was tyrannical, not efficient, a poor economic system, and not democratic. The sporadic alterations in the general design of the English government was not designed by the people voted on by the population in Great Britain, so it cannot be considered a constitution. The purpose of this work is to make an argument why the constitution set up by the French revolution is superior to the pre-Revolutionary French government and the current British government at the time of publication. No constitution cannot be established but through referendum.

Thomas Paine argues that the equality of man is established by his very nature. His arguments come from the bible and other religious resources. The rationale for the rights from man come from God, but the author does not believe an individual religion has a monopoly on the truth. Pain believed in freedom of association and the organization of individuals in the making a political argument. He believed people of opposing thoughts could come to accommodation while they walked this earth. Anyhow he believed in the arguments of different world views could be made to come to the conclusion all men equal in his natural state.

Paine argued government is formed either through Superstition (Religious manipulation) Power (war, conquering a people) and those that arise out of society (constitutional government). Constitution must occur before the government. The United States and France were his examples of governments coming from society. Governments that exist out of power or superstition produce a hereditary government or government ruled by a certain association not from the population or society. Edmond Burke defended the nobility. Mr. Paine made a distinction between government privileges inherited based on birth and the wealth obtained through inheritance. Titles are nicknames of legal sanction to have authority over others in the population. Consequence is not just unfairness, but a less competent government and the lack of fairness in governmental decisions. Distinction between people must be determined by the person's utility. Does the person improve society by holding a specific position of trust. The sovereign and legislators should be determined by the vote. Transmission of ideas through debate will improve the government. Debate is formed through association. People should be encouraged form into groups in order to form alliance to their point across. Society and Civilization, the wants of the people can be pursued more efficiently when a structure exists where ideas may be debated, thoughts learned, and more may seek participation. Some men have abilities that other do not posses. Society therefore the individual function better under structure but that does not mean all governments are equally as effective. Thomas Paine did not want the rights of a select few chosen through heredity protected at the expense of others. Men seek a fair government where their concerns are heard.

Thomas Paine believed in the Universal Right of Conscience. Man does not worship man, but God. The mortal worships the immortal. Government should not presume or regulate how man worships the immortal neither should government define who the immortal is. - If man is free to judge his own faith his beliefs will hold what is to be true. - If man is free to judge another's faith he will hold or believe the idea of another God to be false. Thomas Pain makes the argument government corrupts religion. I have no argument here. But when he argues that government is the cause of religious intolerance that argument is absurd.


The author saw the forces of history on the side democracy. Thomas Paine saw democracy as a major factor in developing the free enterprise system. He saw the United State as a major example of democracy and prosperity. Man was set free to go after wealth in so doing creating more wealth. He presumed France would soon follow the United States. Thomas Paine argued government sanctioned Charters (monopolies for the Aristocrats ) hindering ingenuity and the betterment of man. The more efficient the trade between people and nations the more wealth is produced.

The author goes into great length to argue for less regressive taxes. Taxes on products hit the poor the hardest and increase the need for more in the population to receive aid to be able to survive. Thomas Paine was an advocate of a more progressive tax. He also argued for more government to those in aid by taking returns of investments and taxes on the wealthy.

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This book was written in 1790 and 91. It was written in two parts. It started out as a rebuttal to Edmund Burke's book on the French Revolution, but as it developed Paine ended up discussing the whole aspect of democracy and goes in quite detail into the ills of a monarchial government. Paine was an ex-patriot Englishman who lived for a time in the United States. His time there coincided with the American Revolution, and Paine was a contemporary of George Washington and Ben Franklin. Paine was an idealist and that comes out clear in this important work. He also made a lot of enemies in England with his radical viewpoints. His was not an easy life, but he certainly lived at a crucial time in world history, and his viewpoints are actually quite valid in some respects even today. Not an easy book to read, but an important work to make the effort to do so.

On time, and as promised. It's an excellent perspective on our ancestors point of view.

well, i finally got around to reading thomas paine's "rights of man". his sentences, like in "common sense" are run on in nature. but, to be fair, many writers of that period wrote quite lengthy compound - complex sentences. i found a number of errors, no, not the changes in language over 200 years. basically, i found nearly all of his ideas to be reflections or regurgitations of rousseau or hobbes or any of the other great political philosophers of the era and that which preceded it. the feature, perhaps unique and thus most worthy of reading paine's work, is the combination of logic with his flair for passion and motivation of the people to unite and insist on government's respecting their rights. written after the united states bill of rights had been penned, it clearly wasn't an effort aimed at the people of the united states. by the time this book was written, the people of france were beginning to get restless and beg for democracy and civil rights. paine, having moved to france, might have had some contribution in implanting the seeds of democracy in france. the conversation of the book wanders. it is composed of numerous documents and writings. overall, in order for the reader to capture the flavor of the unrest of the day, this is a well worthwhile book.