------------------------------------------------------------------------

TABLE OF CONTENTS

XIII The Rights of Man

PART THE FIRST

BEING AN ANSWER TO MR. BURKE'S ATTACK ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

* Editor's Introduction

* Dedication to George Washington

* Preface to the English Edition

* Preface to the French Edition

* Rights of Man

* Miscellaneous Chapter

* Conclusion

XIV The Rights of Man

PART THE SECOND

COMBINING PRINCIPLE AND PRACTICE

* French Translator's Preface

* Dedication to M. de la Fayette

* Preface

* Introduction

* Chapter I Of Society and Civilisation

* Chapter II Of the Origin of the Present Old Governments

* Chapter III Of the Old and New Systems of Government

* Chapter IV Of Constitutions

* Chapter V Ways and Means of Improving the Condition of Europe,

Interspersed with Miscellaneous Observations

* Appendix

* Notes

----------------------------------------------------------------------

THE WRITINGS

OF

THOMAS PAINE

COLLECTED AND EDITED BY MONCURE DANIEL CONWAY

VOLUME II.

1779 - 1792

--------------------------------------------------------------------

XIII.

RIGHTS OF MAN.

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION.

WHEN Thomas Paine sailed from America for France, in April, 1787, he

was perhaps as happy a man as any in the world. His most intimate

friend, Jefferson, was Minister at Paris, and his friend Lafayette

was the idol of France. His fame had preceded him, and he at once

became, in Paris, the centre of the same circle of savants and

philosophers that had surrounded Franklin. His main reason for

proceeding at once to Paris was that he might submit to the Academy

of Sciences his invention of an iron bridge, and with its favorable

verdict he came to England, in September. He at once went to his aged

mother at Thetford, leaving with a publisher (Ridgway), his "

Prospects on the Rubicon." He next made arrangements to patent his

bridge, and to construct at Rotherham the large model of it exhibited

on Paddington Green, London. He was welcomed in England by leading

statesmen, such as Lansdowne and Fox, and above all by Edmund Burke,

who for some time had him as a guest at Beaconsfield, and drove him

about in various parts of the country. He had not the slightest

revolutionary purpose, either as regarded England or France. Towards

Louis XVI. he felt only gratitude for the services he had rendered

America, and towards George III. he felt no animosity whatever. His

four months' sojourn in Paris had convinced him that there was

approaching a reform of that country after the American model, except

that the Crown would be preserved, a compromise he approved, provided

the throne should not be hereditary. Events in France travelled more

swiftly than he had anticipated, and Paine was summoned by Lafayette,

Condorcet, and others, as an adviser in the formation of a new

constitution.

Such was the situation immediately preceding the political and

literary duel between Paine and Burke, which in the event turned out

a tremendous war between Royalism and Republicanism in Europe. Paine

was, both in France and in England, the inspirer of moderate

counsels. Samuel Rogers relates that in early life he dined at a

friend's house in London with Thomas Paine, when one of the toasts

given was the " memory of Joshua,"-in allusion to the Hebrew leader's

conquest of the kings of Canaan, and execution of them. Paine

observed that he would not treat kings like Joshua. " I 'm of the

Scotch parson's opinion," he said, "when he prayed against Louis

XIV.-`Lord, shake him over the mouth of hell, but don't let him drop!

' " Paine then gave as his toast, " The Republic of the World,"-which

Samuel Rogers, aged twenty-nine, noted as a sublime idea. This was

Paine's faith and hope, and with it he confronted the revolutionary

storms which presently burst over France and England.

Until Burke's arraignment of France in his parliamentary speech

(February 9, I790), Paine had no doubt whatever that he would

sympathize with the movement in France, and wrote to him from that

country as if conveying glad tidings. Burke's " Reflections on the

Revolution in France " appeared November 1, 1790, and Paine at once

set himself to answer it. He was then staying at the Angel Inn,

Islington. The inn has been twice rebuilt since that time, and from

its contents there is preserved only a small image, which perhaps was

meant to represent " Liberty,"-possibly brought from Paris by Paine

as an ornament for his study. From the Angel he removed to a house in

Harding Street, Fetter Lane. Rickman says Part First of " Rights of

Man " was finished at Versailles, but probably this has reference to

the preface only, as I cannot find Paine in France that year until

April 8. The book had been printed by Johnson, in time for the

opening of Parliament, in February ; but this publisher became

frightened after a few copies were out (there is one in the British

Museum), and the work was transferred to J. S. Jordan, 166 Fleet

Street, with a preface sent from Paris (not contained in Johnson's

edition, nor in the American editions). The pamphlet, though sold at

the same price as Burke's, three shillings, had a vast circulation,

and Paine gave the proceeds to the Constitutional Societies which

sprang up under his teachings in various parts of the country.

Soon after appeared Burke's " Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs."

In this Burke quoted a good deal from " Rights of Man," but replied

to it only with exclamation points, saying that the only answer such

ideas merited was "criminal justice." Paine's Part Second followed,

published February 17, 1792. In Part First Paine had mentioned a

rumor that Burke was a masked pensioner (a charge that will be

noticed in connection with its detailed statement in a further

publication); and as Burke had been formerly arraigned in Parliament,

while Paymaster, for a very questionable proceeding, this charge no

doubt hurt a good deal. Although the government did not follow

Burke's suggestion of a prosecution at that time, there is little

doubt that it was he who induced the prosecution of Part Second.

Before the trial came on, December 18, 1792, Paine was occupying his

seat in the French Convention, and could only be outlawed.

Burke humorously remarked to a friend of Paine and himself, " We hunt

in pairs." The severally representative character and influence of

these two men in the revolutionary era, in France and England,

deserve more adequate study than they have received. While Paine

maintained freedom of discussion, Burke first proposed criminal

prosecution for sentiments by no means libellous (such as Paine's

Part First). While Paine was endeavoring to make the movement in

France peaceful, Burke fomented the league of monarchs against France

which maddened its people, and brought on the Reign of Terror. While

Paine was endeavoring to preserve the French throne ("phantom" though

he believed it), to prevent bloodshed, Burke was secretly writing to

the Queen of France, entreating her not to compromise, and to " trust

to the support of foreign armies " (" Histoire de France depuis

1789." Henri Martin, i., 151). While Burke thus helped to bring the

King and Queen to the guillotine, Paine pleaded for their lives to

the last moment. While Paine maintained the right of mankind to

improve their condition, Burke held that " the awful Author of our

being is the author of our place in the order of existence; and that,

having disposed and marshalled us by a divine tactick, not according

to our will, but according to his, he has, in and by that

disposition, virtually subjected us to act the part which belongs to

the place assigned us." Paine was a religious believer in eternal

principles; Burke held that " political problems do not primarily

concern truth or falsehood. They relate to good or evil. What in the

result is likely to produce evil is politically false, that which is

productive of good politically is true." Assuming thus the

visionary's right to decide before the result what was " likely to

produce evil," Burke vigorously sought to kindle war against the

French Republic which might have developed itself peacefully, while

Paine was striving for an international Congress in Europe in the

interest of peace. Paine had faith in the people, and believed that,

if allowed to choose representatives, they would select their best

and wisest men; and that while reforming government the people would

remain orderly, as they had generally remained in America during the

transition from British rule to selfgovernment. Burke maintained that

if the existing political order were broken up there would be no

longer a people, but " a number of vague, loose individuals, and

nothing more." " Alas! " he exclaims, " they little know how many a

weary step is to be taken before they can form themselves into a

mass, which has a true personality." For the sake of peace Paine

wished the revolution to be peaceful as the advance of summer ; he

used every endeavor to reconcile English radicals to some modus

vivendi with the existing order, as he was willing to retain Louis

XVI. as head of the executive in France : Burke resisted every

tendency of English statesmanship to reform at home, or to negotiate

with the French Republic, and was mainly responsible for the King's

death and the war that followed between England and France in

February, 1793. Burke became a royal favorite, Paine was outlawed by

a prosecution originally proposed by Burke. While Paine was demanding

religious liberty, Burke was opposing the removal of penal statutes

from Unitarians, on the ground that but for those statutes Paine

might some day set up a church in England. When Burke was retiring on

a large royal pension, Paine was in prison, through the devices of

Burke's confederate, the American Minister in Paris. So the two men,

as Burke said, " hunted in pairs."

So far as Burke attempts to affirm any principle he is fairly quoted

in Paine's work, and nowhere misrepresented. As for Paine's own

ideas, the reader should remember that "Rights of Man" was the

earliest complete statement of republican principles. They were

pronounced to be the fundamental principles of the American Republic

by Jefferson, Madison, and Jackson,-the three Presidents who above

all others represented the republican idea which Paine first allied

with American Independence. Those who suppose that Paine did but

reproduce the principles of Rousseau and Locke will find by careful

study of his well-weighed language that such is not the case. Paine's

political principles were evolved out of his early Quakerism. He was

potential in George Fox. The belief that every human soul was the

child of God, and capable of direct inspiration from the Father of

all, without mediator or priestly intervention, or sacramental

instrumentality, was fatal to all privilege and rank. The universal

Fatherhood implied universal Brotherhood, or human equality. But the

fate of the Quakers proved the necessity of protecting the individual

spirit from oppression by the majority as well as by privileged

classes. For this purpose Paine insisted on surrounding the

individual right with the security of the Declaration of Rights, not

to be invaded by any government; and would reduce government to an

association limited in its operations to the defence of those rights

which the individual is unable, alone, to maintain.

From the preceding chapter it will be seen that Part Second of "

Rights of Man " was begun by Paine in the spring of 1 791. At the

close of that year, or early in 1792, he took up his abode with his

friend Thomas" Clio " Rickman, at No. 7 Upper Marylebone Street.

Rickman was a radical publisher; the house remains still a

book-binding establishment, and seems little changed since Paine

therein revised the proofs of Part Second on a table which Rickman

marked with a plate, and which is now in possession of Mr. Edward

Truelove. As the plate states, Paine wrote on the same table other

works which appeared in England in 1792.

In 1795 D. I. Eaton published an edition of " Rights of Man," with a

preface purporting to have been written by Paine while in Luxembourg

prison. It is manifestly spurious. The genuine English and French

prefaces are given.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

RIGHTS OF MAN

BEING AN ANSWER TO MR. BURKE'S ATTACK ON THE FRENCH

REVOLOUTION

BY

THOMAS PAINE

SECRETARY FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS TO CONGRESS IN THE

AMERICAN WAR, AND

AUTHOR OF THE WORKS ENTITLED "COMMON SENSE' AND 'A LETTER TO ABBÉ

RAYNAL"

----------------------------------------------------------------------

DEDICATION

George Washington

President Of The United States Of America

Sir,

I present you a small treatise in defence of those principles of

freedom which your exemplary virtue hath so eminently contributed to

establish. That the Rights of Man may become as universal as your

benevolence can wish, and that you may enjoy the happiness of seeing

the New World regenerate the Old, is the prayer of

Sir,

Your much obliged, and

  Obedient humble Servant,

    Thomas Paine

----------------------------------------------------------------------

PAINE'S PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION

From the part Mr. Burke took in the American Revolution, it was

natural that I should consider him a friend to mankind; and as our

acquaintance commenced on that ground, it would have been more

agreeable to me to have had cause to continue in that opinion than to

change it.

At the time Mr. Burke made his violent speech last winter in the

English Parliament against the French Revolution and the National

Assembly, I was in Paris, and had written to him but a short time

before to inform him how prosperously matters were going on. Soon

after this I saw his advertisement of the Pamphlet he intended to

publish: As the attack was to be made in a language but little

studied, and less understood in France, and as everything suffers by

translation, I promised some of the friends of the Revolution in that

country that whenever Mr. Burke's Pamphlet came forth, I would answer

it. This appeared to me the more necessary to be done, when I saw the

flagrant misrepresentations which Mr. Burke's Pamphlet contains; and

that while it is an outrageous abuse on the French Revolution, and

the principles of Liberty, it is an imposition on the rest of the

world.

I am the more astonished and disappointed at this conduct in Mr.

Burke, as (from the circumstances I am going to mention) I had formed

other expectations.

I had seen enough of the miseries of war, to wish it might never more

have existence in the world, and that some other mode might be found

out to settle the differences that should occasionally arise in the

neighbourhood of nations. This certainly might be done if Courts were

disposed to set honesty about it, or if countries were enlightened

enough not to be made the dupes of Courts. The people of America had

been bred up in the same prejudices against France, which at that

time characterised the people of England; but experience and an

acquaintance with the French Nation have most effectually shown to

the Americans the falsehood of those prejudices; and I do not believe

that a more cordial and confidential intercourse exists between any

two countries than between America and France.

When I came to France, in the spring of 1787, the Archbishop of

Thoulouse was then Minister, and at that time highly esteemed. I

became much acquainted with the private Secretary of that Minister, a

man of an enlarged benevolent heart; and found that his sentiments

and my own perfectly agreed with respect to the madness of war, and

the wretched impolicy of two nations, like England and France,

continually worrying each other, to no other end than that of a

mutual increase of burdens and taxes. That I might be assured I had

not misunderstood him, nor he me, I put the substance of our opinions

into writing and sent it to him; subjoining a request, that if I

should see among the people of England, any disposition to cultivate

a better understanding between the two nations than had hitherto

prevailed, how far I might be authorised to say that the same

disposition prevailed on the part of France? He answered me by letter

in the most unreserved manner, and that not for himself only, but for

the Minister, with whose knowledge the letter was declared to be

written.

I put this letter into the, hands of Mr. Burke almost three years

ago, and left it with him, where it still remains; hoping, and at the

same time naturally expecting, from the opinion I had conceived of

him, that he would find some opportunity of making good use of it,

for the purpose of removing those errors and prejudices which two

neighbouring nations, from the want of knowing each other, had

entertained, to the injury of both.

When the French Revolution broke out, it certainly afforded to Mr.

Burke an opportunity of doing some good, had he been disposed to it;

instead of which, no sooner did he see the old prejudices wearing

away, than he immediately began sowing the seeds of a new inveteracy,

as if he were afraid that England and France would cease to be

enemies. That there are men in all countries who get their living by

war, and by keeping up the quarrels of Nations, is as shocking as it

is true; but when those who are concerned in the government of a

country, make it their study to sow discord and cultivate prejudices

between Nations, it becomes the more unpardonable.

With respect to a paragraph in this work alluding to Mr. Burke's

having a pension, the report has been some time in circulation, at

least two months; and as a person is often the last to hear what

concerns him the most to know, I have mentioned it, that Mr. Burke

may have an opportunity of contradicting the rumour, if he thinks

proper.

      Thomas Paine

PAINE'S PREFACE TO THE FRENCH EDITION

The astonishment which the French Revolution has caused throughout

Europe should be considered from two different points of view: first

as it affects foreign peoples, secondly as it affects their

governments.

The cause of the French people is that of all Europe, or rather of

the whole world; but the governments of all those countries are by no

means favorable to it. It is important that we should never lose

sight of this distinction. We must not confuse the peoples with their

governments; especially not the English people with its government.

The government of England is no friend of the revolution of France.

Of this we have sufficient proofs in the thanks given by that weak

and witless person, the Elector of Hanover, sometimes called the King

of England, to Mr. Burke for the insults heaped on it in his book,

and in the malevolent comments of the English Minister, Pitt, in his

speeches in Parliament.

In spite of the professions of sincerest friendship found in the

official correspondence of the English government with that of

France, its conduct gives the lie to all its declarations, and shows

us clearly that it is not a court to be trusted, but an insane court,

plunging in all the quarrels and intrigues of Europe, in quest of a

war to satisfy its folly and countenance its extravagance.

The English nation, on the contrary, is very favorably disposed

towards the French Revolution, and to the progress of liberty in the

whole world; and this feeling will become more general in England as

the intrigues and artifices of its government are better known, and

the principles of the revolution better understood. The French should

know that most English newspapers are directly in the pay of

government, or, if indirectly connected with it, always under its

orders; and that those papers constantly distort and attack the

revolution in France in order to deceive the nation. But, as it is

impossible long to prevent the prevalence of truth, the daily

falsehoods of those papers no longer have the desired effect.

To be convinced that the voice of truth has been stifled in England,

the world needs only to be told that the government regards and

prosecutes as a libel that which it should protect.*[1] This outrage

on morality is called law, and judges are found wicked enough to

inflict penalties on truth.

The English government presents, just now, a curious phenomenon.

Seeing that the French and English nations are getting rid of the

prejudices and false notions formerly entertained against each other,

and which have cost them so much money, that government seems to be

placarding its need of a foe; for unless it finds one somewhere, no

pretext exists for the enormous revenue and taxation now deemed

necessary.

Therefore it seeks in Russia the enemy it has lost in France, and

appears to say to the universe, or to say to itself. "If nobody will

be so kind as to become my foe, I shall need no more fleets nor

armies, and shall be forced to reduce my taxes. The American war

enabled me to double the taxes; the Dutch business to add more; the

Nootka humbug gave me a pretext for raising three millions sterling

more; but unless I can make an enemy of Russia the harvest from wars

will end. I was the first to incite Turk against Russian, and now I

hope to reap a fresh crop of taxes."

If the miseries of war, and the flood of evils it spreads over a

country, did not check all inclination to mirth, and turn laughter

into grief, the frantic conduct of the government of England would

only excite ridicule. But it is impossible to banish from one's mind

the images of suffering which the contemplation of such vicious

policy presents. To reason with governments, as they have existed for

ages, is to argue with brutes. It is only from the nations themselves

that reforms can be expected. There ought not now to exist any doubt

that the peoples of France, England, and America, enlightened and

enlightening each other, shall henceforth be able, not merely to give

the world an example of good government, but by their united

influence enforce its practice.

(Translated from the French)

RIGHTS OF MAN

Among the incivilities by which nations or individuals provoke and

irritate each other, Mr. Burke's pamphlet on the French Revolution is

an extraordinary instance. Neither the People of France, nor the

National Assembly, were troubling themselves about the affairs of

England, or the English Parliament; and that Mr. Burke should

commence an unprovoked attack upon them, both in Parliament and in

public, is a conduct that cannot be pardoned on the score of manners,

nor justified on that of policy.

There is scarcely an epithet of abuse to be found in the English

language, with which Mr. Burke has not loaded the French Nation and

the National Assembly. Everything which rancour, prejudice, ignorance

or knowledge could suggest, is poured forth in the copious fury of

near four hundred pages. In the strain and on the plan Mr. Burke was

writing, he might have written on to as many thousands. When the

tongue or the pen is let loose in a frenzy of passion, it is the man,

and not the subject, that becomes exhausted.

Hitherto Mr. Burke has been mistaken and disappointed in the opinions

he had formed of the affairs of France; but such is the ingenuity of

his hope, or the malignancy of his despair, that it furnishes him

with new pretences to go on. There was a time when it was impossible

to make Mr. Burke believe there would be any Revolution in France.

His opinion then was, that the French had neither spirit to undertake

it nor fortitude to support it; and now that there is one, he seeks

an escape by condemning it.

Not sufficiently content with abusing the National Assembly, a great

part of his work is taken up with abusing Dr. Price (one of the

best-hearted men that lives) and the two societies in England known

by the name of the Revolution Society and the Society for

Constitutional Information.

Dr. Price had preached a sermon on the 4th of November, 1789, being

the anniversary of what is called in England the Revolution, which

took place 1688. Mr. Burke, speaking of this sermon, says: "The

political Divine proceeds dogmatically to assert, that by the

principles of the Revolution, the people of England have acquired

three fundamental rights:

1. To choose our own governors.

2. To cashier them for misconduct.

3. To frame a government for ourselves."

Dr. Price does not say that the right to do these things exists in

this or in that person, or in this or in that description of persons,

but that it exists in the whole; that it is a right resident in the

nation. Mr. Burke, on the contrary, denies that such a right exists

in the nation, either in whole or in part, or that it exists

anywhere; and, what is still more strange and marvellous, he says:

"that the people of England utterly disclaim such a right, and that

they will resist the practical assertion of it with their lives and

fortunes." That men should take up arms and spend their lives and

fortunes, not to maintain their rights, but to maintain they have not

rights, is an entirely new species of discovery, and suited to the

paradoxical genius of Mr. Burke.

The method which Mr. Burke takes to prove that the people of England

have no such rights, and that such rights do not now exist in the

nation, either in whole or in part, or anywhere at all, is of the

same marvellous and monstrous kind with what he has already said; for

his arguments are that the persons, or the generation of persons, in

whom they did exist, are dead, and with them the right is dead also.

To prove this, he quotes a declaration made by Parliament about a

hundred years ago, to William and Mary, in these words: "The Lords

Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, do, in the name of the people

aforesaid" (meaning the people of England then living) "most humbly

and faithfully submit themselves, their heirs and posterities, for

Ever." He quotes a clause of another Act of Parliament made in the

same reign, the terms of which he says, "bind us" (meaning the people

of their day), "our heirs and our posterity, to them, their heirs and

posterity, to the end of time."

Mr. Burke conceives his point sufficiently established by producing

those clauses, which he enforces by saying that they exclude the

right of the nation for ever. And not yet content with making such

declarations, repeated over and over again, he farther says, "that if

the people of England possessed such a right before the Revolution"

(which he acknowledges to have been the case, not only in England,

but throughout Europe, at an early period), "yet that the English

Nation did, at the time of the Revolution, most solemnly renounce and

abdicate it, for themselves, and for all their posterity, for ever."

As Mr. Burke occasionally applies the poison drawn from his horrid

principles, not only to the English nation, but to the French

Revolution and the National Assembly, and charges that august,

illuminated and illuminating body of men with the epithet of

usurpers, I shall, sans ceremonie, place another system of principles