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Rights of Man
This book is in English. This book contains 229 pages.
229 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1791
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17710 people want to read
About the author
Thomas Paine
1,480 books1,838 followersThomas Paine was an English-American political activist, author, political theorist and revolutionary. As the author of two highly influential pamphlets at the start of the American Revolution, he inspired the Patriots in 1776 to declare independence from Britain. His ideas reflected Enlightenment-era rhetoric of transnational human rights. He has been called "a corset maker by trade, a journalist by profession, and a propagandist by inclination".
Born in Thetford, England, in the county of Norfolk, Paine emigrated to the British American colonies in 1774 with the help of Benjamin Franklin, arriving just in time to participate in the American Revolution. His principal contributions were the powerful, widely read pamphlet Common Sense (1776), the all-time best-selling American book that advocated colonial America's independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain, and The American Crisis (1776–83), a pro-revolutionary pamphlet series. Common Sense was so influential that John Adams said, "Without the pen of the author of Common Sense, the sword of Washington would have been raised in vain."
Paine lived in France for most of the 1790s, becoming deeply involved in the French Revolution. He wrote the Rights of Man (1791), in part a defence of the French Revolution against its critics. His attacks on British writer Edmund Burke led to a trial and conviction in absentia in 1792 for the crime of seditious libel. In 1792, despite not being able to speak French, he was elected to the French National Convention. The Girondists regarded him as an ally. Consequently, the Montagnards, especially Robespierre, regarded him as an enemy.
In December 1793, he was arrested and imprisoned in Paris, then released in 1794. He became notorious because of his pamphlet The Age of Reason (1793–94), in which he advocated deism, promoted reason and freethinking, and argued against institutionalized religion in general and Christian doctrine in particular. He also wrote the pamphlet Agrarian Justice (1795), discussing the origins of property, and introduced the concept of a guaranteed minimum income. In 1802, he returned to America where he died on June 8, 1809. Only six people attended his funeral as he had been ostracized for his ridicule of Christianity.
Born in Thetford, England, in the county of Norfolk, Paine emigrated to the British American colonies in 1774 with the help of Benjamin Franklin, arriving just in time to participate in the American Revolution. His principal contributions were the powerful, widely read pamphlet Common Sense (1776), the all-time best-selling American book that advocated colonial America's independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain, and The American Crisis (1776–83), a pro-revolutionary pamphlet series. Common Sense was so influential that John Adams said, "Without the pen of the author of Common Sense, the sword of Washington would have been raised in vain."
Paine lived in France for most of the 1790s, becoming deeply involved in the French Revolution. He wrote the Rights of Man (1791), in part a defence of the French Revolution against its critics. His attacks on British writer Edmund Burke led to a trial and conviction in absentia in 1792 for the crime of seditious libel. In 1792, despite not being able to speak French, he was elected to the French National Convention. The Girondists regarded him as an ally. Consequently, the Montagnards, especially Robespierre, regarded him as an enemy.
In December 1793, he was arrested and imprisoned in Paris, then released in 1794. He became notorious because of his pamphlet The Age of Reason (1793–94), in which he advocated deism, promoted reason and freethinking, and argued against institutionalized religion in general and Christian doctrine in particular. He also wrote the pamphlet Agrarian Justice (1795), discussing the origins of property, and introduced the concept of a guaranteed minimum income. In 1802, he returned to America where he died on June 8, 1809. Only six people attended his funeral as he had been ostracized for his ridicule of Christianity.
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December 22, 2023
Under what circumstances is political revolution permissible? What should the people do when a government no longer safeguards the rights of all classes? I look at the turmoil that is going on in America right now and wish that our elected officials would read this book; perhaps this old ideological 'midwife' could help our country now - as it labors to give birth to our future.
July 10, 2025
Right before reading this classic defence of universal human liberties, you should read the book to which it is responding. When Thomas Paine published Rights of Man in 1791, he did so as a direct riposte to Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790). The book takes on additional resonance in that historical context; but whether or not you read Burke first, you should certainly seek out this powerful treatise that sets forth well Paine’s enduring belief that any government exists, first and foremost, to defend and protect the rights of its people.
Thomas Paine endures, in the American mind, as a prime exponent of the ideals of the American Revolution. Born in England in 1737, Paine emigrated to the American colonies in 1774 (with a little help from Benjamin Franklin), and dedicated his considerable energies to the patriot cause. His pamphlet Common Sense (1776) persuaded many undecided residents of the 13 colonies to choose the revolutionary side. He accompanied George Washington’s Continental Army on the long retreat from New York City toward Philadelphia, and while on the retreat began The American Crisis, with one of the most stirring introductions in all of American literature: “These are the times that try men’s souls.”
Whether or not he wrote The American Crisis, No. 1 on a drum-head by an army campfire, as the rumours have it, Thomas Paine had a coherent set of convictions regarding the proper relationship between a government and the people it governs, and Rights of Man provides a thoughtful elaboration, in a European context, of the ideas that he set forth for an American audience in Common Sense.
Paine begins by setting forth some general ideas and principles that he will apply to Revolutionary France. He writes that “The duty of man is not a wilderness of turnpike gates, through which he is to pass by tickets from one to the other. It is plain and simple, and consists but of two points: His duty to God, which every man must feel; and with respect to his neighbor, to do as he would be done by” (p. 41).
Having set forth his sense of the fundamental duties of humankind, Paine proceeds to a discussion of natural rights and civil rights:
Natural rights are those which appertain to man in right of his existence. Of this kind are 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 rights of others. Civil rights are those which appertain to man in right of his being a member of society. Every civil right has for its foundation some natural right pre-existing in the individual, but to the enjoyment of which his individual power is not, in all cases, sufficiently competent. Of this kind are all those which relate to security and protection. (p. 41)
Paine is decidedly skeptical regarding the ways in which governments have traditionally come to power. He says of the traditional sources of governmental power that
They may be all comprehended under three heads:
First, Superstition.
Secondly, Power.
Thirdly, The common interest of society and the common rights of man. (p. 43)
Looking at these three traditional sources of governmental power, Paine adds that “The first was a government of priestcraft, the second of conquerors, and the third of reason” (p. 43).
Clearly, with the reader having choices among those three doors, Paine wants the reader to choose Door Number 3, as the Americans had done during their revolution.
Paine makes clear his agreement with the contract theory of government, stating that a legitimate government is one in which “the individuals themselves, each in his own personal and sovereign right, entered into a compact with each other to produce a government”; and Paine adds that this is the only mode in which governments have a right to arise, and the only principle on which they have a right to exist” (p. 44).
Paine sees the French revolutionary government of his time as just that sort of legitimate government – the same way he saw the United States government that began its official existence on July 4, 1776. Edmund Burke, by contrast, did not agree. The great British parliamentarian responded to the French Revolution by writing Reflections on the Revolution in France, in which he denounced the revolution in terms that reflected his conservative political beliefs. In the process, Burke set forth his belief that the long and stable existence of a form of government – e.g., Great Britain’s constitutional monarchy -- itself constituted evidence in support of continuing that form of government.
Thomas Paine is having none of that. He states that Burke “holds up the English Government as a model, in all its parts, to France”, but then presents the French point of view on the English system – “that the portion of liberty enjoyed in England is just enough to enslave a country more productively than by despotism, and that, as the real object of all despotism is revenue, a government so formed obtains more than it could do either by direct despotism, or in a full state of freedom” (p. 50).
To bolster his argument that Revolutionary France, rather than Tory England, embodies the principles that provide the basis for a good government, Paine includes in Rights of Man the entire Déclaration des droits de l’Homme et du citoyen, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen that was promulgated by France’s National Constituent Assembly in 1789.
Paine takes issue not only with Burke’s thesis, but with the rhetorical tone in which Burke has set forth that thesis. He writes that “There is a general rage running through the whole of Mr. Burke’s book. He writes in a rage against the National Assembly; but what is he enraged about?” In response to Burke’s claims that France, having overthrown the monarchy, has fallen into anarchy; Paine dismissively states that “Alas! It is not the nation of France that Mr. Burke means, but the Court; and every Court in Europe, dreading the same fate, is in mourning” (p. 107). The people, Paine feels, can and should support the Revolution in France; only those who hold illegitimate and tyrannical power over the people need fear it.
While Rights of Man was first published in Great Britain, and for a British audience – something that got Paine tried and convicted in absentia for seditious libel – U.S. readers no doubt appreciated the way Paine viewed the work and results of the Constitutional Convention that took place at Philadelphia from May through September of 1787.
Paine reviews the process through which the United States Constitution was drafted, and then notes approvingly that the Framers “did not, like a cabal of courtiers, send for a Dutch Stadtholder, or a German Elector; but they referred the whole matter to the sense and interest of the country” (p. 153) – knowing that his U.S. readers would take pride in knowing that the U.S. Constitution was indeed ratified by all thirteen states in 1787-88.
Paine then contrasts American republicanism with British monarchism, and saves his most venomous remarks for one element of Burke’s argument that particularly infuriates from – that there is really no such thing as the Rights of Man. In Burke’s system, rights flow down from God, to the King (God’s anointed steward on Earth), to the people; and if the people offend against the King, he can take away their rights; and the reason why we all know that this system is the best for everyone, Burke helpfully informs us, is that like monarchical systems like that of Great Britain have been around for a long time!
Paine, of course, believes that rights do not flow downward from God through the King to the people. Rather, for Paine, rights flow upward from the people to their government, as stated in the Declaration of Independence. Paine finds Burke’s arguments laughable, and not even worth a serious dismissal: “If Mr. Burke’s arguments have not weight enough to keep one serious, the fault is less mine than his; and as I am willing to make an apology to the reader for the liberty I have taken, I hope Mr. Burke will also make his for giving the cause” (p. 158).
Paine then branches off into a variety of subjects – too great a variety, arguably, to fit within the scope of this book. I did find that it was compassionate and forward-looking of Paine to think about “the care of the aged”, as when he remarks that “At sixty [a person’s] labour ought to be over, at least from direct necessity. It is painful to see old age working itself to death, in what are called civilized countries, for daily bread” (p. 200). In a time when benefits for older citizens face the prospect of significant cutbacks here in the United States of America – the country Paine once championed so avidly – his words provide a reminder of the idealism of the nation’s founding era.
It is good that Paine wrote Rights of Man when he did – at a time when the French Revolution had not yet taken the grim turns that were in its near future. The first volume of Paine’s book was published in March of 1791, when Louis XVI still presided (theoretically) over a constitutional monarchy in which a declaration of rights had been published. But Louis XVI clearly found the situation dangerous, as in June of 1791 he and his family unsuccessfully attempted to flee Paris for a royalist stronghold in northeastern France. By the time the second volume of Rights of Man was published in February of 1792, France was just two months away from the outbreak of a series of French Revolutionary Wars that began in April of that year, amidst a climate of growing radicalism.
The Reign of Terror would follow in relatively short order, with the execution of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, and the subsequent guillotining of thousands of other unfortunates. Appalled onlookers in Great Britain included some moderates and liberals as well as Burkean conservatives, and there were claims that Burke in Reflections on the Revolution in France had been right all along. In the U.S.A., meanwhile, the changes in the tenor of the French Revolution affected the development of party politics in the young American republic; Thomas Jefferson’s Democratic-Republican party continued to favour the French and their revolutionary cause, while Alexander Hamilton’s Federalist party aligned with the decidedly non-revolutionary British.
Yet if Paine did not successfully see the direction that the French Revolution would eventually take, he nonetheless provided a ringing affirmation of a core idea of human rights today: that power does not flow downward from a government to its people, but rather proceeds upward from the people to a government that serves (not rules) the people. If that ideal remains aspirational rather than real in many countries today, it still remains an ideal worth working for and striving for, as Thomas Paine in Rights of Man reminds us with his customary eloquence and passion.
Thomas Paine endures, in the American mind, as a prime exponent of the ideals of the American Revolution. Born in England in 1737, Paine emigrated to the American colonies in 1774 (with a little help from Benjamin Franklin), and dedicated his considerable energies to the patriot cause. His pamphlet Common Sense (1776) persuaded many undecided residents of the 13 colonies to choose the revolutionary side. He accompanied George Washington’s Continental Army on the long retreat from New York City toward Philadelphia, and while on the retreat began The American Crisis, with one of the most stirring introductions in all of American literature: “These are the times that try men’s souls.”
Whether or not he wrote The American Crisis, No. 1 on a drum-head by an army campfire, as the rumours have it, Thomas Paine had a coherent set of convictions regarding the proper relationship between a government and the people it governs, and Rights of Man provides a thoughtful elaboration, in a European context, of the ideas that he set forth for an American audience in Common Sense.
Paine begins by setting forth some general ideas and principles that he will apply to Revolutionary France. He writes that “The duty of man is not a wilderness of turnpike gates, through which he is to pass by tickets from one to the other. It is plain and simple, and consists but of two points: His duty to God, which every man must feel; and with respect to his neighbor, to do as he would be done by” (p. 41).
Having set forth his sense of the fundamental duties of humankind, Paine proceeds to a discussion of natural rights and civil rights:
Natural rights are those which appertain to man in right of his existence. Of this kind are 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 rights of others. Civil rights are those which appertain to man in right of his being a member of society. Every civil right has for its foundation some natural right pre-existing in the individual, but to the enjoyment of which his individual power is not, in all cases, sufficiently competent. Of this kind are all those which relate to security and protection. (p. 41)
Paine is decidedly skeptical regarding the ways in which governments have traditionally come to power. He says of the traditional sources of governmental power that
They may be all comprehended under three heads:
First, Superstition.
Secondly, Power.
Thirdly, The common interest of society and the common rights of man. (p. 43)
Looking at these three traditional sources of governmental power, Paine adds that “The first was a government of priestcraft, the second of conquerors, and the third of reason” (p. 43).
Clearly, with the reader having choices among those three doors, Paine wants the reader to choose Door Number 3, as the Americans had done during their revolution.
Paine makes clear his agreement with the contract theory of government, stating that a legitimate government is one in which “the individuals themselves, each in his own personal and sovereign right, entered into a compact with each other to produce a government”; and Paine adds that this is the only mode in which governments have a right to arise, and the only principle on which they have a right to exist” (p. 44).
Paine sees the French revolutionary government of his time as just that sort of legitimate government – the same way he saw the United States government that began its official existence on July 4, 1776. Edmund Burke, by contrast, did not agree. The great British parliamentarian responded to the French Revolution by writing Reflections on the Revolution in France, in which he denounced the revolution in terms that reflected his conservative political beliefs. In the process, Burke set forth his belief that the long and stable existence of a form of government – e.g., Great Britain’s constitutional monarchy -- itself constituted evidence in support of continuing that form of government.
Thomas Paine is having none of that. He states that Burke “holds up the English Government as a model, in all its parts, to France”, but then presents the French point of view on the English system – “that the portion of liberty enjoyed in England is just enough to enslave a country more productively than by despotism, and that, as the real object of all despotism is revenue, a government so formed obtains more than it could do either by direct despotism, or in a full state of freedom” (p. 50).
To bolster his argument that Revolutionary France, rather than Tory England, embodies the principles that provide the basis for a good government, Paine includes in Rights of Man the entire Déclaration des droits de l’Homme et du citoyen, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen that was promulgated by France’s National Constituent Assembly in 1789.
Paine takes issue not only with Burke’s thesis, but with the rhetorical tone in which Burke has set forth that thesis. He writes that “There is a general rage running through the whole of Mr. Burke’s book. He writes in a rage against the National Assembly; but what is he enraged about?” In response to Burke’s claims that France, having overthrown the monarchy, has fallen into anarchy; Paine dismissively states that “Alas! It is not the nation of France that Mr. Burke means, but the Court; and every Court in Europe, dreading the same fate, is in mourning” (p. 107). The people, Paine feels, can and should support the Revolution in France; only those who hold illegitimate and tyrannical power over the people need fear it.
While Rights of Man was first published in Great Britain, and for a British audience – something that got Paine tried and convicted in absentia for seditious libel – U.S. readers no doubt appreciated the way Paine viewed the work and results of the Constitutional Convention that took place at Philadelphia from May through September of 1787.
Paine reviews the process through which the United States Constitution was drafted, and then notes approvingly that the Framers “did not, like a cabal of courtiers, send for a Dutch Stadtholder, or a German Elector; but they referred the whole matter to the sense and interest of the country” (p. 153) – knowing that his U.S. readers would take pride in knowing that the U.S. Constitution was indeed ratified by all thirteen states in 1787-88.
Paine then contrasts American republicanism with British monarchism, and saves his most venomous remarks for one element of Burke’s argument that particularly infuriates from – that there is really no such thing as the Rights of Man. In Burke’s system, rights flow down from God, to the King (God’s anointed steward on Earth), to the people; and if the people offend against the King, he can take away their rights; and the reason why we all know that this system is the best for everyone, Burke helpfully informs us, is that like monarchical systems like that of Great Britain have been around for a long time!
Paine, of course, believes that rights do not flow downward from God through the King to the people. Rather, for Paine, rights flow upward from the people to their government, as stated in the Declaration of Independence. Paine finds Burke’s arguments laughable, and not even worth a serious dismissal: “If Mr. Burke’s arguments have not weight enough to keep one serious, the fault is less mine than his; and as I am willing to make an apology to the reader for the liberty I have taken, I hope Mr. Burke will also make his for giving the cause” (p. 158).
Paine then branches off into a variety of subjects – too great a variety, arguably, to fit within the scope of this book. I did find that it was compassionate and forward-looking of Paine to think about “the care of the aged”, as when he remarks that “At sixty [a person’s] labour ought to be over, at least from direct necessity. It is painful to see old age working itself to death, in what are called civilized countries, for daily bread” (p. 200). In a time when benefits for older citizens face the prospect of significant cutbacks here in the United States of America – the country Paine once championed so avidly – his words provide a reminder of the idealism of the nation’s founding era.
It is good that Paine wrote Rights of Man when he did – at a time when the French Revolution had not yet taken the grim turns that were in its near future. The first volume of Paine’s book was published in March of 1791, when Louis XVI still presided (theoretically) over a constitutional monarchy in which a declaration of rights had been published. But Louis XVI clearly found the situation dangerous, as in June of 1791 he and his family unsuccessfully attempted to flee Paris for a royalist stronghold in northeastern France. By the time the second volume of Rights of Man was published in February of 1792, France was just two months away from the outbreak of a series of French Revolutionary Wars that began in April of that year, amidst a climate of growing radicalism.
The Reign of Terror would follow in relatively short order, with the execution of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, and the subsequent guillotining of thousands of other unfortunates. Appalled onlookers in Great Britain included some moderates and liberals as well as Burkean conservatives, and there were claims that Burke in Reflections on the Revolution in France had been right all along. In the U.S.A., meanwhile, the changes in the tenor of the French Revolution affected the development of party politics in the young American republic; Thomas Jefferson’s Democratic-Republican party continued to favour the French and their revolutionary cause, while Alexander Hamilton’s Federalist party aligned with the decidedly non-revolutionary British.
Yet if Paine did not successfully see the direction that the French Revolution would eventually take, he nonetheless provided a ringing affirmation of a core idea of human rights today: that power does not flow downward from a government to its people, but rather proceeds upward from the people to a government that serves (not rules) the people. If that ideal remains aspirational rather than real in many countries today, it still remains an ideal worth working for and striving for, as Thomas Paine in Rights of Man reminds us with his customary eloquence and passion.
October 17, 2017
“The World is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.”
The ruling governments have no special rights; they have no privileges and they have no entitlements. At least, they ought not to have according to Paine. For him the government exists to serve; it has a duty to its nation the same way a solider or a peacekeeper may have. And if they break that duty, if they become corrupt, then it is our moral right to call for revolution.
“Whatever is my right as a man is also the right of another; and it becomes my duty to guarantee as well as to possess.”
-"Liberty Leading the People" by Eugène Delacroix, 1830
Revolution is permissible then if the government does not protect the natural rights of man, rights of liberty and society. Why should we exist under the thumb of another man? Paine speaks openly about revolution and argues that the French revolution was an attack against the monarchy as a construct not an attack on the French King specifically. It was politically driven and when the Bastille was taken, it was a supposed symbolic end of an age of imprisonment. The bars of the prison were opened and liberty began, at least, in theory.
Paine was part of a large liberal wave that poured through the west at this time. He despised the idiotic Burke and his Reflections of a Revolution in France. In contrast to Burke’s conservatism, Paine argue that each new generation has the right to choose how they will be governed. Just because our ancestors agreed to something, it doesn’t mean that the people of the present are beholden to it.
His arguments are sound and his intentions benevolent, though I would love no know what he thought of the aftermath of the French Revolution. The dreams of liberty were truly shattered. The only real limiting factor of this work is its complete lack of rhetoric and persuasive devices. Paine was not a very creative writer; he gives you his ideas but he certainly doesn’t sell them to you.
The ruling governments have no special rights; they have no privileges and they have no entitlements. At least, they ought not to have according to Paine. For him the government exists to serve; it has a duty to its nation the same way a solider or a peacekeeper may have. And if they break that duty, if they become corrupt, then it is our moral right to call for revolution.
“Whatever is my right as a man is also the right of another; and it becomes my duty to guarantee as well as to possess.”
-"Liberty Leading the People" by Eugène Delacroix, 1830
Revolution is permissible then if the government does not protect the natural rights of man, rights of liberty and society. Why should we exist under the thumb of another man? Paine speaks openly about revolution and argues that the French revolution was an attack against the monarchy as a construct not an attack on the French King specifically. It was politically driven and when the Bastille was taken, it was a supposed symbolic end of an age of imprisonment. The bars of the prison were opened and liberty began, at least, in theory.
Paine was part of a large liberal wave that poured through the west at this time. He despised the idiotic Burke and his Reflections of a Revolution in France. In contrast to Burke’s conservatism, Paine argue that each new generation has the right to choose how they will be governed. Just because our ancestors agreed to something, it doesn’t mean that the people of the present are beholden to it.
His arguments are sound and his intentions benevolent, though I would love no know what he thought of the aftermath of the French Revolution. The dreams of liberty were truly shattered. The only real limiting factor of this work is its complete lack of rhetoric and persuasive devices. Paine was not a very creative writer; he gives you his ideas but he certainly doesn’t sell them to you.
December 10, 2022
“It is by distortedly exulting some men that others are distortedly debased.”
Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man is to the disposition of freedom and liberty what Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species is to the evolution and natural selection of life. Yes, it is imperfect, but it put forth a coalesced set of principles that, quite literally, changed the world.
“...though man may be kept ignorant, he cannot be made ignorant. The mind, in discovering truth, acts in the same manner as it acts through the eye in discovering objects; when once any object has been seen, it is impossible to put the mind back to the same condition it was in before it saw it.”
Taken in the context of his time, Paine was a radical. He was an advocate of representative republics in an age of kings. Paine championed both the American and the French revolutions and was an outspoken opponent of monarchy, theocracy and slavery.
In my opinion, Thomas Paine is the embodiment of eighteenth century enlightenment. He was, at once, a political theorist, a philosopher, an activist, and a revolutionary. The fact that he is often little more than a footnote in the high school textbooks of American history is a travesty and a shameful embarrassment.
“My country is the world, and my religion is to do good.”
Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man is to the disposition of freedom and liberty what Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species is to the evolution and natural selection of life. Yes, it is imperfect, but it put forth a coalesced set of principles that, quite literally, changed the world.
“...though man may be kept ignorant, he cannot be made ignorant. The mind, in discovering truth, acts in the same manner as it acts through the eye in discovering objects; when once any object has been seen, it is impossible to put the mind back to the same condition it was in before it saw it.”
Taken in the context of his time, Paine was a radical. He was an advocate of representative republics in an age of kings. Paine championed both the American and the French revolutions and was an outspoken opponent of monarchy, theocracy and slavery.
In my opinion, Thomas Paine is the embodiment of eighteenth century enlightenment. He was, at once, a political theorist, a philosopher, an activist, and a revolutionary. The fact that he is often little more than a footnote in the high school textbooks of American history is a travesty and a shameful embarrassment.
“My country is the world, and my religion is to do good.”
March 17, 2020
· Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, 1790
· Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, 1791
These two pamphlets represent the premier bare-knuckle political prize-fight of its time. In the blue corner – Irish statesman and Whig grandee, aesthetic theorist and small-C conservative, it's the Dublin Dynamo, Edmund ‘Berserk’ Burke. And in the red corner – the stay-maker's son from rural Norfolk, the world's first true international revolutionary, delivering the right hooks of man, it's Thomas ‘Max’ Paine.
I am a Photoshop master
So iconic has this confrontation become that it's difficult, now, to work out what exactly each side represented. There's a lot of people who want to interpret their polemic in modern terms: Right versus Left, Republican versus Liberal, Conservative versus Progressive. Those on the right like to see Burke as ‘the father of modern conservatism’, and view Paine by contrast as reckless and unrealistic; lefties see Paine as rational and empathetic, and consider Burke to be an apologist for inequality. None of these interpretations satisfies me much.
In many ways, this argument about how to understand the French Revolution is historically specific, and not a great analogue to right-v.-left debates today. Burke was certainly conservative in some ways, but he was not a Tory; he was a prominent and generally liberal Whig who had backed the American Revolution. Support for the dissenters and ‘republicans’ (meaning then ‘anti-monarchists’, i.e. chiefly leftwing radicals) was coming from Burke's own party, and his book – which seems eloquent and well-reasoned today, even to its critics – was attacked almost across the board by his contemporaries, including by other Whigs (Fox, the party leader, hated it). At that point, before the Terror, the revolution in France was broadly welcomed not just by those to the left of Burke – the radicals – but also by those to his right, since Pitt and the Tories thought it represented an excellent opportunity for Britain.
Why did all these people care what was happening in France, anyway? The point was that the ideals animating the revolution in France might soon spread elsewhere. Paine talks eagerly of ‘general revolution in Europe’, and Burke too is less concerned with events in France than with how they're received in England.
For Burke, revolution is anathema: change should be effected incrementally, by building on a foundation of existing institutions. He justifies the revolution in America and the Glorious Revolution of 1688 as being matters of last resort, as means of connecting with pre-existing rights and duties, rather than complete novelties. What upsets him about the revolutionaries in France is their ‘total contempt…of all antient institutions, when set in opposition to a present sense of convenience, or to the bent of a present inclination’. ‘People will not look forward to posterity,’ he intones, ‘who never look backward to their ancestors.’
Paine, on the other hand, could not care less about ancestors or their ancient institutions. His whole deal is that it is ‘the living, and not the dead, that are to be accommodated’, and talk of inherited rights and traditional privileges is, as far as he is concerned, a complete waste of breath:
This seems all very well in principle; but Burke's objection is precisely that acting according to abstract principles is a fatal error. It is not that he disagrees with Paine that men have a right to liberty or justice – but such concepts, he feels, are a matter of philosophy, not of politics. Paine can chatter all he likes about a ‘beam of light over the world, which reaches into man’; for Burke, ‘in proportion as [such things] are metaphysically true, they are morally and politically false’:
Here we see the practical statesman set against the idealist. Burke's stance here represents a very British, liberal pragmatism, opposed to continental theory, which I personally find deeply appealing; in this limited area of disagreement, I much prefer his approach. But – with Burke as with many writers – care must be taken not to mistake eloquence for veracity. Behind his appeals to sensibleness, it has to be said that one can detect a note of personal alarm. Surveying the new Assemblée Nationale, he is outraged that there is ‘scarcely to be perceived the slightest traces of what we call the natural landed interest of the country’. France is being run by – shock horror! – normal people. For Burke, it's horrifying to see
It is not the liberté of revolutionary France that Burke objects to, but the égalité. All titles have been abolished (‘It is by distortedly exalting some men, that others are distortedly debased,’ Paine explains); every man is now as honourable as any other. Burke cannot contain himself:
Few people nowadays, no matter how much they admire Burke, will follow him into these arguments for what he calls ‘some decent, regulated pre-eminence’, but actually this is one of the cornerstones of his thesis. He wants titles, honours and the rest of the inherited privileges to stay – especially property, whose ‘characteristic essence’, as he admits, ‘is to be unequal’. So his argument often amounts to a defence of inequality.
Burke's snobbishness and antidisestablishmentarianism have become unfashionable; Paine has won these debates. But the key problem with criticising Burke now is that, of course, on the central facts he turned out to be right. His dire predictions about where the French Revolution would lead – ‘There must be blood’ – came spectacularly true, and this has made it difficult to evaluate (or at any rate to dismiss) his argument. ‘Massacre, torture, hanging! These are your rights of men!’ he predicted. At the time, he was seen as too sanguinary; now, we see that Paine was too sanguine.
Well that didn't age well. Paine's belief – based on those abstract ideals he was so fond of – was that because the revolution was ‘rational’, it had made a point of distinguishing ‘between persons and principles’. ‘It was not against Louis the XVIth, but against the despotic principles of the government, that the nation revolted,’ he claims. But less than two years later they would cut Louis's head off. Paine's rhetorical questions now seem grimly ironic:
…A figure that would unfortunately rise to 16,594 official death sentences handed out before the fall of Robespierre three years later. Paine's own name was nearly on one of them, imprisoned as he was by the Jacobins and only freed at the insistence of the new American ambassador. How quickly radicals and republicans elsewhere would recognise the awfulness of the Terror became a key test for their politics – not unlike the situation for socialists looking to the Soviet Union in the twentieth century.
But throwing away either side of the argument seems like a mistake to me: it's true that Burke v. Paine may be seen as crystallising the ‘revolutionary tendencies of the left’ or the ‘self-serving heartlessness of the right’, but more than either of those things it's a reminder that partisanship is unproductive. If Burke's pragmatism could be separated from his defence of privilege and allied, somehow, with Paine's idealism, then the appeal would be huge. In the pamphlet wars of the 1790s, there was still some good faith that this might be possible – more then, I think, than there is in many modern evaluations of the issues. They're both still very much worth reading, even if neither lands a knockout blow.
· Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, 1791
These two pamphlets represent the premier bare-knuckle political prize-fight of its time. In the blue corner – Irish statesman and Whig grandee, aesthetic theorist and small-C conservative, it's the Dublin Dynamo, Edmund ‘Berserk’ Burke. And in the red corner – the stay-maker's son from rural Norfolk, the world's first true international revolutionary, delivering the right hooks of man, it's Thomas ‘Max’ Paine.
I am a Photoshop master
So iconic has this confrontation become that it's difficult, now, to work out what exactly each side represented. There's a lot of people who want to interpret their polemic in modern terms: Right versus Left, Republican versus Liberal, Conservative versus Progressive. Those on the right like to see Burke as ‘the father of modern conservatism’, and view Paine by contrast as reckless and unrealistic; lefties see Paine as rational and empathetic, and consider Burke to be an apologist for inequality. None of these interpretations satisfies me much.
In many ways, this argument about how to understand the French Revolution is historically specific, and not a great analogue to right-v.-left debates today. Burke was certainly conservative in some ways, but he was not a Tory; he was a prominent and generally liberal Whig who had backed the American Revolution. Support for the dissenters and ‘republicans’ (meaning then ‘anti-monarchists’, i.e. chiefly leftwing radicals) was coming from Burke's own party, and his book – which seems eloquent and well-reasoned today, even to its critics – was attacked almost across the board by his contemporaries, including by other Whigs (Fox, the party leader, hated it). At that point, before the Terror, the revolution in France was broadly welcomed not just by those to the left of Burke – the radicals – but also by those to his right, since Pitt and the Tories thought it represented an excellent opportunity for Britain.
Why did all these people care what was happening in France, anyway? The point was that the ideals animating the revolution in France might soon spread elsewhere. Paine talks eagerly of ‘general revolution in Europe’, and Burke too is less concerned with events in France than with how they're received in England.
For Burke, revolution is anathema: change should be effected incrementally, by building on a foundation of existing institutions. He justifies the revolution in America and the Glorious Revolution of 1688 as being matters of last resort, as means of connecting with pre-existing rights and duties, rather than complete novelties. What upsets him about the revolutionaries in France is their ‘total contempt…of all antient institutions, when set in opposition to a present sense of convenience, or to the bent of a present inclination’. ‘People will not look forward to posterity,’ he intones, ‘who never look backward to their ancestors.’
Paine, on the other hand, could not care less about ancestors or their ancient institutions. His whole deal is that it is ‘the living, and not the dead, that are to be accommodated’, and talk of inherited rights and traditional privileges is, as far as he is concerned, a complete waste of breath:
The circumstances of the world are continually changing, and the opinions of men change also; and as government is for the living, and not for the dead, it is the living only that has any right in it. That which may be thought right and found convenient in one age, may be thought wrong and found inconvenient in another. In such cases, Who is to decide, the living, or the dead?
This seems all very well in principle; but Burke's objection is precisely that acting according to abstract principles is a fatal error. It is not that he disagrees with Paine that men have a right to liberty or justice – but such concepts, he feels, are a matter of philosophy, not of politics. Paine can chatter all he likes about a ‘beam of light over the world, which reaches into man’; for Burke, ‘in proportion as [such things] are metaphysically true, they are morally and politically false’:
What is the use of discussing a man's abstract right to food or to medicine? The question is upon the method of procuring and administering them.
Here we see the practical statesman set against the idealist. Burke's stance here represents a very British, liberal pragmatism, opposed to continental theory, which I personally find deeply appealing; in this limited area of disagreement, I much prefer his approach. But – with Burke as with many writers – care must be taken not to mistake eloquence for veracity. Behind his appeals to sensibleness, it has to be said that one can detect a note of personal alarm. Surveying the new Assemblée Nationale, he is outraged that there is ‘scarcely to be perceived the slightest traces of what we call the natural landed interest of the country’. France is being run by – shock horror! – normal people. For Burke, it's horrifying to see
supreme authority placed in the hands of men not taught habitually to respect themselves; who had no previous fortune in character at stake; who could not be expected to bear with moderation, or to conduct with discretion, a power which they themselves, more than any others, must be surprized to find in their hands.
It is not the liberté of revolutionary France that Burke objects to, but the égalité. All titles have been abolished (‘It is by distortedly exalting some men, that others are distortedly debased,’ Paine explains); every man is now as honourable as any other. Burke cannot contain himself:
The occupation of an hair-dresser, or of a working tallow-chandler, cannot be a matter of honour to any person—to say nothing of a number of other more servile employments.
Few people nowadays, no matter how much they admire Burke, will follow him into these arguments for what he calls ‘some decent, regulated pre-eminence’, but actually this is one of the cornerstones of his thesis. He wants titles, honours and the rest of the inherited privileges to stay – especially property, whose ‘characteristic essence’, as he admits, ‘is to be unequal’. So his argument often amounts to a defence of inequality.
Burke's snobbishness and antidisestablishmentarianism have become unfashionable; Paine has won these debates. But the key problem with criticising Burke now is that, of course, on the central facts he turned out to be right. His dire predictions about where the French Revolution would lead – ‘There must be blood’ – came spectacularly true, and this has made it difficult to evaluate (or at any rate to dismiss) his argument. ‘Massacre, torture, hanging! These are your rights of men!’ he predicted. At the time, he was seen as too sanguinary; now, we see that Paine was too sanguine.
[W]hen the French Revolution is compared with the revolutions of other countries [Paine wrote], the astonishment will be, that it is marked with so few sacrifices.
Well that didn't age well. Paine's belief – based on those abstract ideals he was so fond of – was that because the revolution was ‘rational’, it had made a point of distinguishing ‘between persons and principles’. ‘It was not against Louis the XVIth, but against the despotic principles of the government, that the nation revolted,’ he claims. But less than two years later they would cut Louis's head off. Paine's rhetorical questions now seem grimly ironic:
Whom has the National Assembly brought to the scaffold? None.
…A figure that would unfortunately rise to 16,594 official death sentences handed out before the fall of Robespierre three years later. Paine's own name was nearly on one of them, imprisoned as he was by the Jacobins and only freed at the insistence of the new American ambassador. How quickly radicals and republicans elsewhere would recognise the awfulness of the Terror became a key test for their politics – not unlike the situation for socialists looking to the Soviet Union in the twentieth century.
But throwing away either side of the argument seems like a mistake to me: it's true that Burke v. Paine may be seen as crystallising the ‘revolutionary tendencies of the left’ or the ‘self-serving heartlessness of the right’, but more than either of those things it's a reminder that partisanship is unproductive. If Burke's pragmatism could be separated from his defence of privilege and allied, somehow, with Paine's idealism, then the appeal would be huge. In the pamphlet wars of the 1790s, there was still some good faith that this might be possible – more then, I think, than there is in many modern evaluations of the issues. They're both still very much worth reading, even if neither lands a knockout blow.
March 26, 2025
”Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good.”
Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man is a busy book. On its first level, it is a polemic that answered Edmund Burke’s attack on the French Revolution in his Reflections on the Revolution in France. Much of the book’s sharpest wit and snark is directed at Burke in this capacity. But as Christopher Hitchens pointed out, being a polemic is just a start for Rights of Man. He called it a “pean to human liberty,” and identified it as both a revisionist history of England, and a “manifesto, setting out the basic principles of reform, and if necessary, of revolution.” It is that final element which gives this book ongoing, as well as historical relevance.
Paine savagely attacked Burke’s argument for hereditary power, in particular his assertion that one generation can pledge future generations in perpetuity to be bound to the same power. He asserts that a hereditary monarch makes no more sense than a hereditary mathematician. He further attacks the idea of aristocracy, advocating that all aristocratic titles be eliminated. He challenges Burke’s assertion that the (unwritten) English Constitution is far superior to the French Constitution, to the point of denying that there is truly even any such thing as an English Constitution. And he recommends reforms of the English government, such as calling a national assembly to compose a written constitution like that of the Americans.
”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; the rational world is my friend, because I am a friend of its happiness: When these things can be said, there may that country boast its Constitution and its Government.”
In the final section of his book Paine directly addresses social welfare. He attacks England’s Poor Laws, calling them ineffective and primitive, and calls for them to be eliminated. He writes:
”When in countries that are called civilized, we see age going to the workhouse and youth to the gallows, something must be wrong with the system of government.”
He suggests both tax reforms and educational reform, and proposes an old age pension.
While Paine never directly calls for revolution against England’s monarch, his clever rhetoric subtly implies it. His work sold as many as one million copies before it was forcibly withdrawn from print, and frightened the government, not so much for what it said (such sentiments were commonplace among educated gentlemen of the Enlightenment Age) but for who it said it to. Paine wrote clearly and directly for the common man, and it was deemed dangerous for the common people to posses such knowledge. Prime Minister William Pitt, according to his niece, said that of course Paine was right, but what was he to do? If he didn’t repress him he would have a bloody revolution on his hands. So Paine was chased out of England (he was tipped off by the poet William Blake, and escaped just ahead of a ginned up mob who were coming for him). A show trial was arranged with a packed jury who tried Paine in absentia, and found him guilty of Seditious Libel (a capital offense at that time). His works were banned in England, and remained so throughout the 19th century. Paine was never again to return to England.
Rights of Man is one of the most important books of the Enlightenment period. It is a fascinating and clever polemic, valuable as history, and still significant for the progressive reforms it suggested. It does become a bit crowded with everything it attempted to accomplish, but that hardly detracts from its incredible significance.
Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man is a busy book. On its first level, it is a polemic that answered Edmund Burke’s attack on the French Revolution in his Reflections on the Revolution in France. Much of the book’s sharpest wit and snark is directed at Burke in this capacity. But as Christopher Hitchens pointed out, being a polemic is just a start for Rights of Man. He called it a “pean to human liberty,” and identified it as both a revisionist history of England, and a “manifesto, setting out the basic principles of reform, and if necessary, of revolution.” It is that final element which gives this book ongoing, as well as historical relevance.
Paine savagely attacked Burke’s argument for hereditary power, in particular his assertion that one generation can pledge future generations in perpetuity to be bound to the same power. He asserts that a hereditary monarch makes no more sense than a hereditary mathematician. He further attacks the idea of aristocracy, advocating that all aristocratic titles be eliminated. He challenges Burke’s assertion that the (unwritten) English Constitution is far superior to the French Constitution, to the point of denying that there is truly even any such thing as an English Constitution. And he recommends reforms of the English government, such as calling a national assembly to compose a written constitution like that of the Americans.
”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; the rational world is my friend, because I am a friend of its happiness: When these things can be said, there may that country boast its Constitution and its Government.”
In the final section of his book Paine directly addresses social welfare. He attacks England’s Poor Laws, calling them ineffective and primitive, and calls for them to be eliminated. He writes:
”When in countries that are called civilized, we see age going to the workhouse and youth to the gallows, something must be wrong with the system of government.”
He suggests both tax reforms and educational reform, and proposes an old age pension.
While Paine never directly calls for revolution against England’s monarch, his clever rhetoric subtly implies it. His work sold as many as one million copies before it was forcibly withdrawn from print, and frightened the government, not so much for what it said (such sentiments were commonplace among educated gentlemen of the Enlightenment Age) but for who it said it to. Paine wrote clearly and directly for the common man, and it was deemed dangerous for the common people to posses such knowledge. Prime Minister William Pitt, according to his niece, said that of course Paine was right, but what was he to do? If he didn’t repress him he would have a bloody revolution on his hands. So Paine was chased out of England (he was tipped off by the poet William Blake, and escaped just ahead of a ginned up mob who were coming for him). A show trial was arranged with a packed jury who tried Paine in absentia, and found him guilty of Seditious Libel (a capital offense at that time). His works were banned in England, and remained so throughout the 19th century. Paine was never again to return to England.
Rights of Man is one of the most important books of the Enlightenment period. It is a fascinating and clever polemic, valuable as history, and still significant for the progressive reforms it suggested. It does become a bit crowded with everything it attempted to accomplish, but that hardly detracts from its incredible significance.
December 4, 2013
In an age of brilliant political writers, Paine, a naturalized American citizen and inspired propagandist for the American Revolutionary cause, represents perhaps the era’s most radical and unfiltered ideological voice. Written in the immediate aftermath of the French Revolution and the somewhat removed aftermath of the American, “The Rights of Man”, published in two parts (1791 and 1792) is one of Thomas Paine’s most influential treatises on the nature and form of just government. In it, Paine articulates the then-revolutionary view that government’s purpose was to serve the will of the people and, to the extent that it didn’t, the people had the right to rebel against it.
Despite having been written in the 18th century, the form and language of “The Rights of Man” is clear and comprehensible to modern readers. As has been commented elsewhere, owing to the fact Paine wrote the book in haste, he occasionally wanders; starting with one point, only to meander off on fascinating yet incongruous tangents. Notwithstanding this, Paine’s arguments are clear, eloquent and utterly compelling and the tangents, while sometimes odd, inevitably contribute to strengthening the force of the whole.
For those inclined to cite the “Founding Fathers” in support of whatever particular view they happen to espouse, Paine’s ideological purity makes him an interesting touchstone. Having never held public office himself, Paine was an ideologue whose views were untempered by the necessity of compromise. As a result, his ideas represent the embodiment of radical Enlightenment theory regarding a new form government that rejected hereditary monarchy in favor of representative democracy.
While Paine serves up some tasty out-of-context sound bites for the tri-cornered hat crowd, there is actually little comfort for neoconservative ideas in a thoughtful reading of his work. Yes, he railed against government and taxes, but what is often lost when summoning him as an authority on modern liberty is the context in which he expressed his views. By “government”, Paine meant a hereditary monarchy and an attending court of aristocrats whose power originated from the Norman Conquest and perpetuated itself in succeeding generations by fraud, force, oppression and patronage. His objection to “government” was not that they exist, but that, except for in America and France, the “governments” of Europe were illegitimate in that they were not of and subject to the will of the people. His objection to taxes was not necessarily that they be levied, but rather, in who they were levied against and in how they were used. In Paine’s time taxes were nothing more than a conduit through which money was taken from the poor and siphoned into the pockets of the rich. Certainly shocking for anyone inclined to adorn their arguments with the presumed conservative aura of “the Founders”, Paine advocated, in addition to the establishment of representative democracy for progressive taxes, cutting military spending and (get this) using the money educate the poor, provide public housing, provide support for the indigent, provide universal employment in urban centers and care for the aged. In short, “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; the rational world is my friend, because I am the friend of its happiness: when these things can be said, then may that country boast its constitution and its government.”
If one didn’t know better, one might suspect the man had been born in Kenya.
Despite having been written in the 18th century, the form and language of “The Rights of Man” is clear and comprehensible to modern readers. As has been commented elsewhere, owing to the fact Paine wrote the book in haste, he occasionally wanders; starting with one point, only to meander off on fascinating yet incongruous tangents. Notwithstanding this, Paine’s arguments are clear, eloquent and utterly compelling and the tangents, while sometimes odd, inevitably contribute to strengthening the force of the whole.
For those inclined to cite the “Founding Fathers” in support of whatever particular view they happen to espouse, Paine’s ideological purity makes him an interesting touchstone. Having never held public office himself, Paine was an ideologue whose views were untempered by the necessity of compromise. As a result, his ideas represent the embodiment of radical Enlightenment theory regarding a new form government that rejected hereditary monarchy in favor of representative democracy.
While Paine serves up some tasty out-of-context sound bites for the tri-cornered hat crowd, there is actually little comfort for neoconservative ideas in a thoughtful reading of his work. Yes, he railed against government and taxes, but what is often lost when summoning him as an authority on modern liberty is the context in which he expressed his views. By “government”, Paine meant a hereditary monarchy and an attending court of aristocrats whose power originated from the Norman Conquest and perpetuated itself in succeeding generations by fraud, force, oppression and patronage. His objection to “government” was not that they exist, but that, except for in America and France, the “governments” of Europe were illegitimate in that they were not of and subject to the will of the people. His objection to taxes was not necessarily that they be levied, but rather, in who they were levied against and in how they were used. In Paine’s time taxes were nothing more than a conduit through which money was taken from the poor and siphoned into the pockets of the rich. Certainly shocking for anyone inclined to adorn their arguments with the presumed conservative aura of “the Founders”, Paine advocated, in addition to the establishment of representative democracy for progressive taxes, cutting military spending and (get this) using the money educate the poor, provide public housing, provide support for the indigent, provide universal employment in urban centers and care for the aged. In short, “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; the rational world is my friend, because I am the friend of its happiness: when these things can be said, then may that country boast its constitution and its government.”
If one didn’t know better, one might suspect the man had been born in Kenya.
December 23, 2012
Thomas Paine is one of those writers who seemed to have been dropped by a deist God 200 years before the world was really ready for him. His energy, honesty and political bravery was intense. By his voice alone he helped to transform the West. Common Sense, the Rights of Man, and finally the Age of Reason have all thrown the political and social gauntlet down and caused people to either cheer him (Common Sense) or hiss his name (Age of Reason).
The Rights of Man was visionary in its call for intellectual republicanism and social justice. Paine was and is a prophetic voice for individual freedom and moral equality. He is my favorite founder to quote whenever I find myself in a debate where someone wants to lump the 'Founders' together in some giant Libertarian Christianity pudding. He was a true radical and a true American.
The Rights of Man was visionary in its call for intellectual republicanism and social justice. Paine was and is a prophetic voice for individual freedom and moral equality. He is my favorite founder to quote whenever I find myself in a debate where someone wants to lump the 'Founders' together in some giant Libertarian Christianity pudding. He was a true radical and a true American.
July 25, 2016
Paine’s political manifesto details how governments and hierarchies are, in his opinion, corrupt, as they rely on the power of a few rather than of everyone equally. He devises a plan where the elite few, who often gain power through birth rights, to have their control abolished and a democratic, representative and equal community created in its place, where every person has an equal say and an equal part in the running of the community. Power to all or power to none!
The latter part of this reformist agenda includes particulars concerning liberal taxation and the redistribution of wealth, much of which still holds political interest and relevance today.
Radical and revolutionary, this has serious weight behind its arguments and yet it is in actuality no more than a retort to the alternative philosophy of the French Revolution as proposed by British politician Edmund Burke. For that reason, this is brilliant and yet flawed.
The prose, in respect to language alone, is understandable, more so than the political and philosophical tags would have had me think, and yet the central message was buried under argument and criticism that muddied my understanding in some areas. It is answering questions raised in Burke’s writing in a disjointed fashion that leaves me turning to Google for further understanding in more than one area. I felt that this was delivered in a somewhat confusing manner, leading my attention to stray numerous times and me to skim some areas in the latter parts of this. The central message is of great interest and importance, and yet the delivery is lacking for me.
The latter part of this reformist agenda includes particulars concerning liberal taxation and the redistribution of wealth, much of which still holds political interest and relevance today.
Radical and revolutionary, this has serious weight behind its arguments and yet it is in actuality no more than a retort to the alternative philosophy of the French Revolution as proposed by British politician Edmund Burke. For that reason, this is brilliant and yet flawed.
The prose, in respect to language alone, is understandable, more so than the political and philosophical tags would have had me think, and yet the central message was buried under argument and criticism that muddied my understanding in some areas. It is answering questions raised in Burke’s writing in a disjointed fashion that leaves me turning to Google for further understanding in more than one area. I felt that this was delivered in a somewhat confusing manner, leading my attention to stray numerous times and me to skim some areas in the latter parts of this. The central message is of great interest and importance, and yet the delivery is lacking for me.
April 15, 2011
A pleasure to read beginning to end, Rights of Man by Thomas Paine is the third book in a discussion series in which I am currently participating, and for the life of me I can't figure out why this masterpiece of history, philosophy, politics and statecraft was not the lead-off book in the series. Not only does the clear-thinking Paine lay out with understatement and restraint winning arguments against the ridiculous Edmund Burke and his Reflections on the Revolution in France, but in the first section provides an understandable narrative of the history of events leading to the French Revolution and proves himself quite the capable journalist to boot. I'd trust Paine's account any day over that of the supposed "objective" historian Christopher Hibbert, who wrote The Days of the French Revolution, the first book in the series.
And of course, this book reprints The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens by the National Assembly of France, something one would think would be a centerpiece in any serious work about the French Revolution.
I often found myself, in reading Part One, stopping to put down the book and raise my hand in salute to Mr. Paine, who decimated the monarchist arguments of the conservative Mr. Burke. Then in Part Two, I found myself stopping to put down the book and marvel at the forward-thinking economic ideas of our rabble-rousing Founding Father. Burke gets all the credit for precognition for a brief passage that foretells the rise of a military dictator in France, but it seems Paine was recommending measures that sound an awful lot like Social Security, the Earned Income Tax Credit, and a progressive tax system well before the turn of the 19th Century.
Everyone should read this book. A good dose of Rights of Man would do much to temper the current hard-hearted anti-tax fervor of supposed "patriots" and remind supposed "Christians" that this freethinking revolutionary never lost his compassion for the aged, infirm and poor. I wonder what would happen if people substituted references to "monarch" with "corporation."
And of course, this book reprints The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens by the National Assembly of France, something one would think would be a centerpiece in any serious work about the French Revolution.
I often found myself, in reading Part One, stopping to put down the book and raise my hand in salute to Mr. Paine, who decimated the monarchist arguments of the conservative Mr. Burke. Then in Part Two, I found myself stopping to put down the book and marvel at the forward-thinking economic ideas of our rabble-rousing Founding Father. Burke gets all the credit for precognition for a brief passage that foretells the rise of a military dictator in France, but it seems Paine was recommending measures that sound an awful lot like Social Security, the Earned Income Tax Credit, and a progressive tax system well before the turn of the 19th Century.
Everyone should read this book. A good dose of Rights of Man would do much to temper the current hard-hearted anti-tax fervor of supposed "patriots" and remind supposed "Christians" that this freethinking revolutionary never lost his compassion for the aged, infirm and poor. I wonder what would happen if people substituted references to "monarch" with "corporation."
June 26, 2020
Thomas Paine was an Englishman, participated in the American Revolution and wrote this book in 1792 from the homonymous declaration coming out of the French revolution to defend these principles. A little book, very well written, well-argued, where it theorizes what the liberals who made the revolutions of this century that is the world today in the West. So he says it would end all wars and the money spent on them would use with older people, children's education, health, country roads, etc.
October 25, 2018
Thomas Paine lived in the town I live in, in New Jersey. It's the town he lived the longest in, and was affectionate for it, once writing while in France that he wished he was home in Bordentown and that he missed his horse buttons.
Despite his affection there is scant evidence or memorial; no Thomas Paine day, no historical tours..just a statue in a park. Even in statue Paine looks poised for action, like a sort of contained energy in marble.
Writing is also a still art form, there within a moment, immovable, yet Paine wrote with such electric it seems alive; his defence of the French Revolution and republican government is full of revolutionary excitement. He was aided in Burke's disapproval of it, his conclusion that after the revolution France was no longer there. Reading a skilled writer work against a text, to refute its arguments, is fun if it's done correctly and here, it is. Our modern political debate seldom has this, it's simply filled with advertising and bad photographs of opponents.
That's not to admit much of this reads like propaganda; Paine writing of the rights of man in a country that did not allow the vote to men based on color, and women not at all, seems to be on shaky ground.
Yet taken as the idea that government needs change occasionally to reinvent itself; that government can become despotic and that this worth fighting against, these ideas still inspire. When Paine writes that once monarchy is abolished war for profit, corruption, and excessive government spending will diminish, us moderns can only say, "hey monarchy, hold my beer".
Yet that is millennial cynicism perhaps; or gen x angst; maybe it would do to see that it's possible for big change, not even possible but necessary, required, prerequisite to everything. It almost makes one want to get off social media and do something. For that reason everyone should read this.
A+
Despite his affection there is scant evidence or memorial; no Thomas Paine day, no historical tours..just a statue in a park. Even in statue Paine looks poised for action, like a sort of contained energy in marble.
Writing is also a still art form, there within a moment, immovable, yet Paine wrote with such electric it seems alive; his defence of the French Revolution and republican government is full of revolutionary excitement. He was aided in Burke's disapproval of it, his conclusion that after the revolution France was no longer there. Reading a skilled writer work against a text, to refute its arguments, is fun if it's done correctly and here, it is. Our modern political debate seldom has this, it's simply filled with advertising and bad photographs of opponents.
That's not to admit much of this reads like propaganda; Paine writing of the rights of man in a country that did not allow the vote to men based on color, and women not at all, seems to be on shaky ground.
Yet taken as the idea that government needs change occasionally to reinvent itself; that government can become despotic and that this worth fighting against, these ideas still inspire. When Paine writes that once monarchy is abolished war for profit, corruption, and excessive government spending will diminish, us moderns can only say, "hey monarchy, hold my beer".
Yet that is millennial cynicism perhaps; or gen x angst; maybe it would do to see that it's possible for big change, not even possible but necessary, required, prerequisite to everything. It almost makes one want to get off social media and do something. For that reason everyone should read this.
A+
April 5, 2018
Years ahead of his time, the all too unknown Englishman, Thomas Paine - from Thetford, Norfolk - had a large hand in setting out the constitutions for both the French Revolution and the newly formed country of America. Rights of Man is Paine's political treatise - a reply to the insanely monarchical English philosopher, Edmund Burke - wherein he sets out his view for a new politics - basically inventing the idea of a fair tax system, pensions, welfare benefits for the poor and needy, and blasting the idea of primogeniture (heredity) every chance he gets.
Of unelected government (the House of Lords, for example), Paine says: 'A body of men accountable to nobody, ought not to be trusted by anybody.'
Brilliant :)
Of a country's right to preen itself (think here of the United Kingdom and the USA today) he says:
'When it shall be said by 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 not in want, the taxes are not oppressive; the rational world is my friend, because I am the friend of its happiness: When these things can be said, then may that country boast its constitution and its government.'
For anyone with the slightest interest in Brexit, and all that malarky, Paine is essential reading. He should be taught in schools. Everywhere.
In Rights of Man, Paine says, 'My country is the world, my religion is to do good.'
Forward thinking, without being self-righteous. He'd scare the life out of all these so-called politicians of today.
That is why Thomas Paine is incredible. A man of courage and brilliance, a true voice of the common man.
And sorely missed.
Of unelected government (the House of Lords, for example), Paine says: 'A body of men accountable to nobody, ought not to be trusted by anybody.'
Brilliant :)
Of a country's right to preen itself (think here of the United Kingdom and the USA today) he says:
'When it shall be said by 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 not in want, the taxes are not oppressive; the rational world is my friend, because I am the friend of its happiness: When these things can be said, then may that country boast its constitution and its government.'
For anyone with the slightest interest in Brexit, and all that malarky, Paine is essential reading. He should be taught in schools. Everywhere.
In Rights of Man, Paine says, 'My country is the world, my religion is to do good.'
Forward thinking, without being self-righteous. He'd scare the life out of all these so-called politicians of today.
That is why Thomas Paine is incredible. A man of courage and brilliance, a true voice of the common man.
And sorely missed.
July 26, 2015
The Rights of Man is a political masterwork that lays bare the bankruptcy of governments and political systems that derive their authority from any other source than the People. In his time, Paine was specifically eviscerating monarchies (i.e. 18th century Britain) that established themselves through military conquest and then claimed legitimacy over generations based on biology. By contrast, the revolutions in America and France had established the primacy of the nation (i.e. the People) to define a country and establish rules to govern it based on the choices of citizens over time. Reflecting more than 200 years after Paine wrote this book I think much of our Country's political history and its foreseeable future is about whether and when the fundamental rights of "man" will apply to all of us equally regardless of race, wealth, gender, etc etc.
August 4, 2012
This books has patches of brilliance buried in amongst many pages of Paine picking a fight with Edmund Burke. This is somewhat typical of "classics" of political theory like this - they were designed only as pamphlets to deal with the issues of the day, and were not meant to be timeless.
While there is indeed timeless wisdom in here, a modern reader must sift through a lot of dirt to get to it - hence the two-star rating
While there is indeed timeless wisdom in here, a modern reader must sift through a lot of dirt to get to it - hence the two-star rating
May 11, 2016
هذا الكتاب هو عبارة عن رد توماس بين على كتاب إدمند بورك الذي انتقد فيه الثورة الفرنسية. من خلال كتاب هتشنز حول توماس بين فقد فهمت السياق الذي صدر فيه هذا الكتاب
نشر هذا الكتاب في دفعتين في العام ١٧٩١ و١٧٩٢ وقد تم عرض كاتبه للمحاكمة في بريطانيا حيث وجهت له تهمة التحريض على العصيان وهي حينها تهمة خطيرة جدًا في بريطانيا ويعاقب عليها بالإعدام أو الحبس الموبد. طبعًا في العالم العربي لا تزال هذه التهمة توجه لمن ينتقد الحكومات ويدعو للإصلاح الحقيقي والجذري. لحسن حظ بين فقد تمكن من الهرب من بريطانيا قبل محاكمته ولكنه لم يعد لها بعد ذلك حيث تم الحكم عليه غيابيًا بالإعدام. كتب هذا الكتاب على عجالة ولذلك فإن ترتيب المواضيع فيه لم يتم بصورة منهجية.
يجعلك الكتاب تعيش ذلك العصر الذي كان بداية تهاوي الأنظمة الملكية التي تستمد حقها في الحكم من السلطة الدينية وبالتالي بداية ظهور الأنظمة الجمهورية وحكم الشعب. فتعرف الأفكار والحجج التي يطرحها كل طرف. هذه الأحداث حدث في أوروبا قبل أكثر من قرنين ولكن ارتباطها بمنطقتنا واضح.
فما هي أهم محتويات هذا الكتاب الذي دفع المحكمة لاصدار هذا الحكم القاسي؟
يرفض بين التفويض المطلق والأبدي الذي يذكره بورك، حيث أنه وبعد ثورة ١٦٨٨ اتفق البرلمان مع الملك على تقاسم معين للسلطة. يقول بين أن هذا الاتفاق هو من صنع جيل عاش في الماضي وأن من حق الجيل الحالي رفضه، فالحكومة هي للأحياء وليست للأموات. يؤكد بين أن المشكلة ليست في شخصية الملك، بل في طبيعة النظام الوراثي الذي يؤدي للطغيان والظلم. فالمشكلة في المبادئ وليست في الأشخاص.
يذكر لنا بين أيضًا تاريخ مختصر للثورة الفرنسية وخلفياتها السياسية والاجتماعية والاقتصادية من وجهة نظر من عاشوها في تلك الفترة وهي الفترة الوردية من الثورة قبل أن يسيطر حزب اليعقوبيين على السلطة ويبدؤو زمن الإرهاب. لذلك فإن نظرة بين إيجابية جدًا للثورة وهو يرى الإماكنيات الكبيرة التي يمكن لها أن تحققها ويدخل في تحليل لطبيعة الثورات والقائمين عليها. يلاحظ هنا ابتعاد الكاتب عن توجيه أي لوم لملك فرنسا واقتصار ذلك على وزرائه ومستشاريه. إن هذا شبيه جدًا بأحداث ٢٠١١ التي عاصرتها في البحرين حيث أن الأمل بالتغيير كان كبيرًا جدًا في الأيام الأولى للثورة.
يطرح بين كذلك نظريته السياسية فيقول أن الفرد وجد قبل الدولة وأن المجتمعات يمكن أن تبنى على ثلاثة مبادئ، الأول هو الخرافة والذي يتجلى في سيطرة وحكم رجال الدين، الثاني هو القوة والذي يتجلى في حكم الفاتحين والغزاة أما الثالث فهو المصلحة المشتركة للمجتمع وحقوق الإنسان والذي يتجلى في حكم العقل. ففي هذا الثالث تتكون الحكومة من اتفاق بين الأفراد.
يدخل بين في مقارنات كثيرة بين النظامين البريطاني والفرنسي، فيطرح موضوع الدستور والنظام الانتخابي وقرار السلم والحرب والنظام الضريبي وتنظيم شؤون الدين والسيادة وغيرها من الأمور التي كانت مطروحة للنقاش في ذلك العصر.
أكثر ما أعجبني في الكتاب هو الجو الذي جعلني أعيشه حيث أحسست بروح ذلك العصر الذي زلزل عروش الطغيان في أوروبا وسمح بظهور الأنظمة الديموقراطية. لقد أيقظ لدي ذكريات جميلة جدًا أحسست فيها بهواء الحرية. أنصح بهذا الكتاب لمن يريد التعرف على أبرز النقاط الخلافية بين المصلحين الثوريين وبين أتباع السلطة المحافظين وهي نقاط لا زال كثير منها يتكرر اليوم.
نشر هذا الكتاب في دفعتين في العام ١٧٩١ و١٧٩٢ وقد تم عرض كاتبه للمحاكمة في بريطانيا حيث وجهت له تهمة التحريض على العصيان وهي حينها تهمة خطيرة جدًا في بريطانيا ويعاقب عليها بالإعدام أو الحبس الموبد. طبعًا في العالم العربي لا تزال هذه التهمة توجه لمن ينتقد الحكومات ويدعو للإصلاح الحقيقي والجذري. لحسن حظ بين فقد تمكن من الهرب من بريطانيا قبل محاكمته ولكنه لم يعد لها بعد ذلك حيث تم الحكم عليه غيابيًا بالإعدام. كتب هذا الكتاب على عجالة ولذلك فإن ترتيب المواضيع فيه لم يتم بصورة منهجية.
يجعلك الكتاب تعيش ذلك العصر الذي كان بداية تهاوي الأنظمة الملكية التي تستمد حقها في الحكم من السلطة الدينية وبالتالي بداية ظهور الأنظمة الجمهورية وحكم الشعب. فتعرف الأفكار والحجج التي يطرحها كل طرف. هذه الأحداث حدث في أوروبا قبل أكثر من قرنين ولكن ارتباطها بمنطقتنا واضح.
فما هي أهم محتويات هذا الكتاب الذي دفع المحكمة لاصدار هذا الحكم القاسي؟
يرفض بين التفويض المطلق والأبدي الذي يذكره بورك، حيث أنه وبعد ثورة ١٦٨٨ اتفق البرلمان مع الملك على تقاسم معين للسلطة. يقول بين أن هذا الاتفاق هو من صنع جيل عاش في الماضي وأن من حق الجيل الحالي رفضه، فالحكومة هي للأحياء وليست للأموات. يؤكد بين أن المشكلة ليست في شخصية الملك، بل في طبيعة النظام الوراثي الذي يؤدي للطغيان والظلم. فالمشكلة في المبادئ وليست في الأشخاص.
يذكر لنا بين أيضًا تاريخ مختصر للثورة الفرنسية وخلفياتها السياسية والاجتماعية والاقتصادية من وجهة نظر من عاشوها في تلك الفترة وهي الفترة الوردية من الثورة قبل أن يسيطر حزب اليعقوبيين على السلطة ويبدؤو زمن الإرهاب. لذلك فإن نظرة بين إيجابية جدًا للثورة وهو يرى الإماكنيات الكبيرة التي يمكن لها أن تحققها ويدخل في تحليل لطبيعة الثورات والقائمين عليها. يلاحظ هنا ابتعاد الكاتب عن توجيه أي لوم لملك فرنسا واقتصار ذلك على وزرائه ومستشاريه. إن هذا شبيه جدًا بأحداث ٢٠١١ التي عاصرتها في البحرين حيث أن الأمل بالتغيير كان كبيرًا جدًا في الأيام الأولى للثورة.
يطرح بين كذلك نظريته السياسية فيقول أن الفرد وجد قبل الدولة وأن المجتمعات يمكن أن تبنى على ثلاثة مبادئ، الأول هو الخرافة والذي يتجلى في سيطرة وحكم رجال الدين، الثاني هو القوة والذي يتجلى في حكم الفاتحين والغزاة أما الثالث فهو المصلحة المشتركة للمجتمع وحقوق الإنسان والذي يتجلى في حكم العقل. ففي هذا الثالث تتكون الحكومة من اتفاق بين الأفراد.
يدخل بين في مقارنات كثيرة بين النظامين البريطاني والفرنسي، فيطرح موضوع الدستور والنظام الانتخابي وقرار السلم والحرب والنظام الضريبي وتنظيم شؤون الدين والسيادة وغيرها من الأمور التي كانت مطروحة للنقاش في ذلك العصر.
أكثر ما أعجبني في الكتاب هو الجو الذي جعلني أعيشه حيث أحسست بروح ذلك العصر الذي زلزل عروش الطغيان في أوروبا وسمح بظهور الأنظمة الديموقراطية. لقد أيقظ لدي ذكريات جميلة جدًا أحسست فيها بهواء الحرية. أنصح بهذا الكتاب لمن يريد التعرف على أبرز النقاط الخلافية بين المصلحين الثوريين وبين أتباع السلطة المحافظين وهي نقاط لا زال كثير منها يتكرر اليوم.
November 17, 2013
Flawed but vastly superior to Burke. Paine relies more upon the argument that man has rights, than any form of historical tradition. Paine was right in that there is no “political Adam” from which all laws derive. People have a right to revolution, because government is a construct of man, not an organic system ordained by god and the dead hand of tradition. Also, the unity of man is an absolute and based upon natural rights, while nobles hold their position through coercion and war. He correctly sees that peace in Europe will come with democracy, and that the French Revolution is both a continuation of the American Revolution and the dawn of something greater. Those are just my scattered thoughts on this remarkable book.
November 11, 2015
“Rights of Man by Thomas Paine” is an excellent piece of work where Paine focuses on the flaws and ascendancies of one type of government over the other.
In the first part, Paine discusses about the various rights of man where he says that men are all of one degree and consequently all men are born equal with equal natural right and every child born into the world must be considered as deriving its existence from god.
After that Paine put forwards his inputs by condemning Mr Burke with whose writings he completely disagree. He calls his writings more of a kind of Shakespearean Drama than of truth, which is a necessity of historical works.
Paine supports the American Revolution and the French Revolution and praises America by describing it as a country being governed peacefully even after having an amalgamation of religions, customs, languages etc. This also gives brief introduction of Paine's understanding towards society in general. How he visions Bourgeois to be part of his politics and governance.
He believes that as long as there will be an abuse of monarchy, such revolutions will persist in the future. He condemns hereditary monarchical system of government and says that it is like putting an idiot on the throne with no qualifications. He says that even if Homer or Euclid had sons, they would not have been able to finish their fathers’ incomplete work as sons are not equally capable as their fathers.
He then shares how a leader becomes a leader. He describes three ways through which a leader comes to power. Firstly, superstition, Secondly, power and thirdly, by upholding the common rights of the man. In the first case like an oracle makes a prophecy and people follow it, so as long as this kind of superstition exists, people will accept the leader. In the second case, till the time, the king is able to keep control of the territory, he will be the king. In the third case, however, till the time the leader is able to uphold the common rights of man, the leader shall maintain as the ruler.( Which is an interesting explanation **smile**)
Paine describes government as a national association and meant only and only for the welfare of the people. When the government is unable to do so, the people revolt. Then Paine discusses an instance when there was an abuse of government. In France, a government had been developed but only the people who pay tax of more than sixty sous per annum were allowed to vote or elect their leaders. So, in an area consisting of thirty thousand people, only two people voted.
After that, Thomas Paine discusses the importance of constitution. He describes constitution as an antecedent for the government. He discusses that the constitution should consist of values that uphold the rights of the man. Also, he describes that constitution is valid only till the time it is enforced. He says that the government shall follow what is laid down in the constitution and the people and the people only have the right to amend it, not those who exercise power in the government. He describes the government only as a creature of the constitution.
Best Regards
Nandini
In the first part, Paine discusses about the various rights of man where he says that men are all of one degree and consequently all men are born equal with equal natural right and every child born into the world must be considered as deriving its existence from god.
After that Paine put forwards his inputs by condemning Mr Burke with whose writings he completely disagree. He calls his writings more of a kind of Shakespearean Drama than of truth, which is a necessity of historical works.
Paine supports the American Revolution and the French Revolution and praises America by describing it as a country being governed peacefully even after having an amalgamation of religions, customs, languages etc. This also gives brief introduction of Paine's understanding towards society in general. How he visions Bourgeois to be part of his politics and governance.
He believes that as long as there will be an abuse of monarchy, such revolutions will persist in the future. He condemns hereditary monarchical system of government and says that it is like putting an idiot on the throne with no qualifications. He says that even if Homer or Euclid had sons, they would not have been able to finish their fathers’ incomplete work as sons are not equally capable as their fathers.
He then shares how a leader becomes a leader. He describes three ways through which a leader comes to power. Firstly, superstition, Secondly, power and thirdly, by upholding the common rights of the man. In the first case like an oracle makes a prophecy and people follow it, so as long as this kind of superstition exists, people will accept the leader. In the second case, till the time, the king is able to keep control of the territory, he will be the king. In the third case, however, till the time the leader is able to uphold the common rights of man, the leader shall maintain as the ruler.( Which is an interesting explanation **smile**)
Paine describes government as a national association and meant only and only for the welfare of the people. When the government is unable to do so, the people revolt. Then Paine discusses an instance when there was an abuse of government. In France, a government had been developed but only the people who pay tax of more than sixty sous per annum were allowed to vote or elect their leaders. So, in an area consisting of thirty thousand people, only two people voted.
After that, Thomas Paine discusses the importance of constitution. He describes constitution as an antecedent for the government. He discusses that the constitution should consist of values that uphold the rights of the man. Also, he describes that constitution is valid only till the time it is enforced. He says that the government shall follow what is laid down in the constitution and the people and the people only have the right to amend it, not those who exercise power in the government. He describes the government only as a creature of the constitution.
Best Regards
Nandini
Read
December 13, 2018Thomas Paine, Rights of Man (1792). Abridged from 90,000 down to 7200 words by Glyn Hughes in this pdf: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&s...
Paine justly knocks monarchy. He supposes representative government will abolish many of the world's ills. Sadly, no.
England had Rule by Landowner enshrined in law.
The 21st century world is increasingly ruled by an aristocracy of wealth. As Noam Chomsky explains in Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky, real power is in the private economy. Corporate wealth dictates a race to the bottom in its obligations, and to the top in its freedoms and rewards. As Chomsky understands and Paine did not, it's the owners of wealth who control the world, not the nominal form of government.
Thomas Paine failed to predict that the minuscule-government, negligible flat-rate taxes and Sacred Right of Property he championed, would lead right back to the hereditary aristocracy of wealth and power he abhorred.
Paine also put the constant warring among nations down to abuses inherent only to monarchy. Paine would've been surprised at the hundreds of military campaigns the U.S. has waged, between the states and around the world.
"Monarchy (banditry), by admitting a participation of the spoil, makes itself friends." [pp. 14, 16 of 20, of the pdf linked above]. Capitalism does the same thing, even more effectively.
Paine saw that only the corrupt could be elected to Parliament [p. 17 of 20]. He didn't predict that, 200 years later, /no/ president could be elected without kissing Wall Street's ring. Nor that representative government represents the loudest voice: nearly always the voice of wealth. He couldn't have known that laws would be written by armies of lobbyists, paid by corporate wealth, the laws being enacted without even being /read/ by the congressional representatives and senators. He didn't know that the public would need not just to elect a representative but to also hire a lobbyist on every issue that wealth lobbies on. Largely, we the people have not hired a lobbyist. So we have no voice. https://politics.theonion.com/america...
Paine justly knocks monarchy. He supposes representative government will abolish many of the world's ills. Sadly, no.
England had Rule by Landowner enshrined in law.
The 21st century world is increasingly ruled by an aristocracy of wealth. As Noam Chomsky explains in Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky, real power is in the private economy. Corporate wealth dictates a race to the bottom in its obligations, and to the top in its freedoms and rewards. As Chomsky understands and Paine did not, it's the owners of wealth who control the world, not the nominal form of government.
Thomas Paine failed to predict that the minuscule-government, negligible flat-rate taxes and Sacred Right of Property he championed, would lead right back to the hereditary aristocracy of wealth and power he abhorred.
Paine also put the constant warring among nations down to abuses inherent only to monarchy. Paine would've been surprised at the hundreds of military campaigns the U.S. has waged, between the states and around the world.
"Monarchy (banditry), by admitting a participation of the spoil, makes itself friends." [pp. 14, 16 of 20, of the pdf linked above]. Capitalism does the same thing, even more effectively.
Paine saw that only the corrupt could be elected to Parliament [p. 17 of 20]. He didn't predict that, 200 years later, /no/ president could be elected without kissing Wall Street's ring. Nor that representative government represents the loudest voice: nearly always the voice of wealth. He couldn't have known that laws would be written by armies of lobbyists, paid by corporate wealth, the laws being enacted without even being /read/ by the congressional representatives and senators. He didn't know that the public would need not just to elect a representative but to also hire a lobbyist on every issue that wealth lobbies on. Largely, we the people have not hired a lobbyist. So we have no voice. https://politics.theonion.com/america...
November 9, 2017
This is Paine's defence of the ideals of the French Revolution. In Rights of Man, he fights for equality and democracy, basically the Revolutionary ideals: freedom, equality, brotherhood. He shows how important it is for European nations in the 18th century to reform their states, in order to give people better lives. Nobility, clergy and roalty should make way (after centuries of tiranny and persecution) for the people.
You might think: why should someone defend the enlightened ideals of the French Revolution? In arguing this, Paine goes after Edmund Burke, and English conservatist politician, who went berserk against the French Revolution. This was partly out of fear for a British revolution, even though the English ever since the Glorious Revolution, already had a consitution in which the power of the monarch was limited and in which people and nobility had rights and representation.
It has always irritated me to hear conservatists talk about the ideals of the past, stepping (conveniently) over the fact that in that same past, life was miserable for the masses. Every bit of freedom has been won by honest men (and women) against people like Burke; with Rights of Man, Paine shows us he stood at the right side of history. (I honestly don't understand why Burke is so beloved by contemporary conservatists).
Anyway, Paine shows us to be an honest, clear thinker, who has his heart in the right place. A republican government (in other words: no aristocracy or monarchy) is the most egalitarian and fair type of government and the dignity of human beings should be respected at all times, codified by law. Defintely a recommended book for people interested in human rights or the French Revolution (or its ideals).
You might think: why should someone defend the enlightened ideals of the French Revolution? In arguing this, Paine goes after Edmund Burke, and English conservatist politician, who went berserk against the French Revolution. This was partly out of fear for a British revolution, even though the English ever since the Glorious Revolution, already had a consitution in which the power of the monarch was limited and in which people and nobility had rights and representation.
It has always irritated me to hear conservatists talk about the ideals of the past, stepping (conveniently) over the fact that in that same past, life was miserable for the masses. Every bit of freedom has been won by honest men (and women) against people like Burke; with Rights of Man, Paine shows us he stood at the right side of history. (I honestly don't understand why Burke is so beloved by contemporary conservatists).
Anyway, Paine shows us to be an honest, clear thinker, who has his heart in the right place. A republican government (in other words: no aristocracy or monarchy) is the most egalitarian and fair type of government and the dignity of human beings should be respected at all times, codified by law. Defintely a recommended book for people interested in human rights or the French Revolution (or its ideals).
June 10, 2009
I'm re-reading this book in light of the current administration. I'm confident that Pres. Bush played "hookie" the week his college class read & discussed this book.
everyone interested in politics & mankind should give this a go!
everyone interested in politics & mankind should give this a go!
October 19, 2014
A masterpiece of political literature that deserves to be read by every American. Essentially beginning as a refutation of Burke's confusing, backward Reflections on the Revolution in France, it ends as a treatise about why governments exist and how they ought to behave. Thomas Paine is a saint.
November 26, 2010
perhaps the most amazing thing about this treastie on freedom is that it's dedicated to my favorite slave-owner, George Washington!
January 5, 2021
For my whole life, I've looked at the political infrastructure as a sort of necessary evil, a corrupt mass of entitled bureaucrats who vote themselves favors while apparently ignoring the real good they could do for their own country, for their fellow citizens. This is not anarchist Republicanism run amok; it's a reaction to a world in which governments just tend to keep taking care of themselves first. That Guy In Washington who seems likely to be evicted from the White House on January 20 is only a caricaturish extreme of what has been happening forever.
Okay, not forever.
Apparently, there was a time when American politics was constructed on real principles, and people held those principles to heart, making sure they did not overstep their self-imposed limitations because they were keenly aware of just how easy it was to abuse power once it made itself at home in their hearts and minds. They had, after all, just thrown off the tyranny and abusive self-interest of British imperialism, so they were careful to give themselves no more power than was necessary to get the necessary work of government done. Thomas Paine was one of the architects of that noble experiment in human affairs called the United States of America, and it is ennobling to listen to him comment on the English government's defensive and rather panicked response to the French Revolution that was under way at the time he wrote The Rights Of Man. It's actually rather funny sometimes, because he is a ruthless debater and seems to find it somewhat frustrating that Edmund Burke, the man with whom he obviously wanted to debate, could offer nothing of substance to support the position of British monarchical conservatism. Paine is unable to restrain from open mockery at times. Listen to him skewer Burke's assumption that man is fundamentally a depraved creature, separated from virtue and goodness (and therefore, we are encouraged to conclude, too irresponsible to take on responsibility for himself): "I will quote Mr. Burke's catalogue of barriers that he has set up between man and his Maker. Putting himself in the character of a herald, he says: 'We fear God--we look with awe to kings--with affection to Parliaments--with duty to magistrates--with reverence to priests, and with respect to nobility.' Mr. Burke has forgotten to put in 'chivalry.' He has also forgotten to put in Peter." That last shot is brilliant.
Although much of this is concerned with the repudiation of the monarchy, the defense of French revolutionary ideals (which were, sadly, about to descend into the madness of the Terror, almost before the ink was dry on Paine's book), and the reformation of the English tax system (and some of his ideas were stolen by Prime Minister Pitt's government, if we are to believe the Appendix), this remains a timely reminder of the perils of government for its own sake, most poignantly in America. Listen to him comment on the obvious idiocy of laying down laws and governments for all time, as Burke infamously tried to do for the 1688 British Parliament: "The circumstances of the world are continually changing, and the opinions of men change also; and as government is for the living, and not for the dead, it is the living only that has any right in it. That which may be thought right and found convenient in one age may be thought wrong and found inconvenient in another. In such cases, who is to decide, the living or the dead?"
Yes, we agree, smacking our hands on the table. That is true. And yet, somehow, Americans today subscribe to the quaint notion that the Founding Fathers established a Constitution that must dictate the terms of political and social discourse more than two centuries after it was penned. Politicians and the public have forgotten that there are these things called "Amendments" that, yes, the Founding Fathers themselves thought necessary to append to their own well-considered compositions. Paine himself would be upset at what he calls "an assumed usurped [his italics] dominion over posterity for ever," but he would be more upset at the cynical complacency into which the vast majority of Americans have settled themselves regarding their political rights and responsibilities. The behavior of politicians today--even in the most liberal of Western democracies--resembles in an often appalling way the self-centered arrogance of the British parliamentarians of Paine's day. And we do so very little about it.
But it is right to conclude a review of this work by focusing on the positive and humane ideals that seem to have inspired Paine throughout his life. "In stating these matters, I speak an open and disinterested language, dictated by no passion by that of humanity. To me, who have not only refused offers, because I thought them improper, but have declined rewards I might with reputation have accepted, it is no wonder that meanness and imposition appear disgustful. Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is my world, and my religion is to do good."
This is one Founding Father we would do well to listen to again.
Okay, not forever.
Apparently, there was a time when American politics was constructed on real principles, and people held those principles to heart, making sure they did not overstep their self-imposed limitations because they were keenly aware of just how easy it was to abuse power once it made itself at home in their hearts and minds. They had, after all, just thrown off the tyranny and abusive self-interest of British imperialism, so they were careful to give themselves no more power than was necessary to get the necessary work of government done. Thomas Paine was one of the architects of that noble experiment in human affairs called the United States of America, and it is ennobling to listen to him comment on the English government's defensive and rather panicked response to the French Revolution that was under way at the time he wrote The Rights Of Man. It's actually rather funny sometimes, because he is a ruthless debater and seems to find it somewhat frustrating that Edmund Burke, the man with whom he obviously wanted to debate, could offer nothing of substance to support the position of British monarchical conservatism. Paine is unable to restrain from open mockery at times. Listen to him skewer Burke's assumption that man is fundamentally a depraved creature, separated from virtue and goodness (and therefore, we are encouraged to conclude, too irresponsible to take on responsibility for himself): "I will quote Mr. Burke's catalogue of barriers that he has set up between man and his Maker. Putting himself in the character of a herald, he says: 'We fear God--we look with awe to kings--with affection to Parliaments--with duty to magistrates--with reverence to priests, and with respect to nobility.' Mr. Burke has forgotten to put in 'chivalry.' He has also forgotten to put in Peter." That last shot is brilliant.
Although much of this is concerned with the repudiation of the monarchy, the defense of French revolutionary ideals (which were, sadly, about to descend into the madness of the Terror, almost before the ink was dry on Paine's book), and the reformation of the English tax system (and some of his ideas were stolen by Prime Minister Pitt's government, if we are to believe the Appendix), this remains a timely reminder of the perils of government for its own sake, most poignantly in America. Listen to him comment on the obvious idiocy of laying down laws and governments for all time, as Burke infamously tried to do for the 1688 British Parliament: "The circumstances of the world are continually changing, and the opinions of men change also; and as government is for the living, and not for the dead, it is the living only that has any right in it. That which may be thought right and found convenient in one age may be thought wrong and found inconvenient in another. In such cases, who is to decide, the living or the dead?"
Yes, we agree, smacking our hands on the table. That is true. And yet, somehow, Americans today subscribe to the quaint notion that the Founding Fathers established a Constitution that must dictate the terms of political and social discourse more than two centuries after it was penned. Politicians and the public have forgotten that there are these things called "Amendments" that, yes, the Founding Fathers themselves thought necessary to append to their own well-considered compositions. Paine himself would be upset at what he calls "an assumed usurped [his italics] dominion over posterity for ever," but he would be more upset at the cynical complacency into which the vast majority of Americans have settled themselves regarding their political rights and responsibilities. The behavior of politicians today--even in the most liberal of Western democracies--resembles in an often appalling way the self-centered arrogance of the British parliamentarians of Paine's day. And we do so very little about it.
But it is right to conclude a review of this work by focusing on the positive and humane ideals that seem to have inspired Paine throughout his life. "In stating these matters, I speak an open and disinterested language, dictated by no passion by that of humanity. To me, who have not only refused offers, because I thought them improper, but have declined rewards I might with reputation have accepted, it is no wonder that meanness and imposition appear disgustful. Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is my world, and my religion is to do good."
This is one Founding Father we would do well to listen to again.
October 29, 2018
I read this following reading Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France as it is Paine’s response to that work. I was honestly surprised that I disagreed more with Paine’s ideas (on which my own government is at least in part based) than with Burke’s. I did not agree with the philosophical foundation for Paine’s ideas - Rousseau, Locke, and others. And the historical results of the French Revolution fail to match with what Paine was sure would happen when these ideas were implemented as they were in France. Paine’s tone struck me as stubborn, rude, arrogant, idealistic, and even libelous and reminded me too much of all the worst parts of American political bickering that is so common now. And the last section of the work was entirely financial figures specific to the time period in which Paine wrote which made for a rather boring and tedious conclusion.
In spite of being unconvinced by Paine myself, I think this work would be an excellent choice for a book club discussion group. Topics for discussion might include: the inherent goodness (or sinfulness) of man, what rights man has, from where or whom do those rights derive, gradual v. immediate change, the role of tradition, reformation v. replacement of government, the role of government in taxation and commerce, the welfare state, pros and cons of social or economic classes, the role of religion in life or the state, whether corrupt governments directly lead to piracy, and many others...
In spite of being unconvinced by Paine myself, I think this work would be an excellent choice for a book club discussion group. Topics for discussion might include: the inherent goodness (or sinfulness) of man, what rights man has, from where or whom do those rights derive, gradual v. immediate change, the role of tradition, reformation v. replacement of government, the role of government in taxation and commerce, the welfare state, pros and cons of social or economic classes, the role of religion in life or the state, whether corrupt governments directly lead to piracy, and many others...
December 24, 2025
“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. Man has no property in man; neither has any generation a property in the generations which are to follow”
Vandaag stuk van gelezen voor Eng Lit, was verbazingwekkend leesbaar voor uit 1791 te zijn! Zo fijn om Burke te zien tegengesproken worden, zeker door iemand die geen blad voor z’n mond nam over conservatisme, slavernij en hoognodige (idg Franse) revolutie. Meer dan 200 jaar later toch nog altijd actueel!
Vandaag stuk van gelezen voor Eng Lit, was verbazingwekkend leesbaar voor uit 1791 te zijn! Zo fijn om Burke te zien tegengesproken worden, zeker door iemand die geen blad voor z’n mond nam over conservatisme, slavernij en hoognodige (idg Franse) revolutie. Meer dan 200 jaar later toch nog altijd actueel!
September 4, 2025
Доста добро и детайло оборване на аргументите на Бърк против Френската Революция. Интересен оптимистичен поглед към Първата Френска Република, която се оказва, че не заслужава чак такъв оптимизъм.
February 20, 2017
Written in response to Edmund Burke's "Reflections on the French Revolution," Paine obliterates the ideology of monarchical government. I probably should have read Burke's piece first to get a better understanding of Paine's counter-arguments, but this still provides a solid philosophical analysis of the role of government and the origin of sovereignty. He even goes to the length that countries start wars to increase their coffers from taxes, an interesting position I had not considered before. Paine unfortunately did not have the benefit of hindsight to see the horrors of the French Revolution before writing this piece, but I suppose a new country and constitution throwing off monarchical servitude and based on an American model would be exhilarating. Even if you do not believe in "natural rights," this pamphlet breaks down the major arguments for natural rights advocates in a simple and succinct way. Not quite as good as "Common Sense" in my opinion, but a pamphlet nonetheless that should be read by any freedom loving citizen. My favorite quotes:
"Wrongs cannot have a legal descent."
"Government is arbitrary."
"The Government should reform the system, not reform the people."
"'A' cannot take away from 'B' to give to 'C'."
"What started as 'plunder' assumed the softer name of 'revenue.'"
"Wrongs cannot have a legal descent."
"Government is arbitrary."
"The Government should reform the system, not reform the people."
"'A' cannot take away from 'B' to give to 'C'."
"What started as 'plunder' assumed the softer name of 'revenue.'"
June 25, 2016
Tom Paine's Rights of Man, written in two parts (1791 & 1792), was a response to Edmund Burke's criticisms of the French Revolution. It's an optimistic work, looking forward to the ongoing development, both moral and political, of mankind, and the eradication of 'ignorance'. A combination of idealism and something more prosaic, it calls for democratic government by and for the people, for the greater good, one which limits itself to the support and defence of man's natural rights of liberty, equality, freedom of conscience and freedom of speech.
More or less self-educated, Paine's writing is powerful, passionate and accessible, making it no surprise that he was a best-selling pamphlet author in his time. Today, he is hailed as the originator of the idea of human rights - but his understanding of what this means is a far cry from our contemporary usage where, seemingly, everything is a 'right' from decent school dinners to designer shoes and handbags. Paine, importantly, explores not just rights, but also the duties and responsibilities of the citizen.
It is noticeable that Paine is completely uninterested in the idea of women's suffrage and the gendering of rights, a marked absence in his texts which serves to slightly delimit his democratic ideal.
More or less self-educated, Paine's writing is powerful, passionate and accessible, making it no surprise that he was a best-selling pamphlet author in his time. Today, he is hailed as the originator of the idea of human rights - but his understanding of what this means is a far cry from our contemporary usage where, seemingly, everything is a 'right' from decent school dinners to designer shoes and handbags. Paine, importantly, explores not just rights, but also the duties and responsibilities of the citizen.
It is noticeable that Paine is completely uninterested in the idea of women's suffrage and the gendering of rights, a marked absence in his texts which serves to slightly delimit his democratic ideal.
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