Rights of Man: Being an Answer to Mr. Burke's Attack on the French Revolution Book

"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.