The Rights of Man

“It was not against Louis the XVIth, but against the despotic principles of the government, that the nation revolted.”

Burke chastises the French revolutionaries for rebelling against a mild-mannered king, to which Paine replies that the comparative gentleness of the man sitting on the throne does little to soften the brutality of the absolutist system. Paine therefore insists that the French rebelled against the “despotic principles” of monarchy and not the monarch as an individual. Indeed, throughout Part 1 Paine is generally well-disposed toward King Louis XVI, who until early 1791 had more or less gone along with the Revolution and its reforms, although his stance would later change.

“He pities the plumage, but forgets the dying bird.”

Paine observes that Burke has devoted pages and pages to lamenting the supposed decline of chivalry in a world where aristocracy is under assault, and yet Burke, according to Paine, has written nothing of the poor souls “who lingered out the most wretched of lives” (17) confined in the Bastille (17). In criticizing Burke’s pity for the “plumage” of aristocracy—its wealth and glamor—Paine suggests that Burke is ignoring the “dying bird” that is the real tragedy: the French common people and their suffering.

“Society grants him nothing.”

Here Paine refers to the doctrine of natural rights, which posits that rights are inherent to all humans from birth and are not the work of any man-made system or “society.” If the rights of man come from nature, then it follows that all are born free and equal, in which case no individual or group of individuals has the power to bestow rights. In addition to serving as the basis of every true republican government, this doctrine answers those who cite charters, prerogatives, and other monarchical grants as “rights.”

“In reviewing the history of the English Government, its wars and its taxes, a bystander, not blinded by prejudice, nor warped by interest, would declare, that taxes were not raised to carry on wars, but that wars were raised to carry on taxes.”

This sentence summarizes a view of English history and practice that Paine shared with Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, William Cobbett, and other Anglo-American political radicals of the era. War, according to Paine and others of like mind, was not the object of taxation but the excuse for it. War always enriched the same well-connected individuals and swelled the national debt, which allowed government ministers to raise taxes and then use revenue from those taxes to fill various government offices with their cronies. Later in the book, Paine argues that this sort of corruption will vanish as soon as Britain abandons hereditary government and adopts the principles of the American and French Revolutions.

“Titles are but nick-names, and every nick-name is a title.”

Paine here mocks aristocracy and its artificial distinctions. In deriding titles as mere “nick-names” and claiming that every and any nick-name can just as easily be “a title,” Paine attempts to rob the aristocracy of its glamor and mystique. Paine notes that such titled distinctions have fallen out of fashion in France because the people now see them as ridiculous. The same thing, he believes, will happen in Britain.

“Toleration is not the opposite of Intolerance, but is the counterfeit of it.”

Here is one of the few passages in which Paine refers to religion, in this case the concept of religious “toleration.” Paine rejects religious toleration because he denies that any worshipers have the right to establish theirs as an official or approved faith and then, from their spiritual high perch, to decide which other faiths are to be “tolerated” or banned. Freedom of conscience, therefore, is a natural right for Paine.

“It is worth remarking, that the National Assembly neither pursued those fugitive conspirators, nor took any notice of them, nor sought to retaliate in any shape whatever.”

The “fugitive conspirators” were those in high positions in the French government who opposed the Revolution, actively tried to stop it, and then fled Paris after the fall of the Bastille. Paine spends much of Part 1 defending French revolutionaries from Burke’s charges that they are nothing more than a bloodthirsty mob. This quotation, which appears at the beginning of a paragraph highlighting the National Assembly’s focus on orderly deliberations, is part of that defense.

“A thousand years hence, those who shall live in America or in France, will look back with contemplative pride on the origin of their governments and say, This was the work of our glorious ancestors!”

Paine offers a number of optimistic predictions regarding the future of republican government in the world. While American governments in the early-21st century continue to operate under the forms established in the late-18th century, the original French revolutionary republic did not survive Paine’s lifetime. The general trajectory across the Western world has, however, seen a move away from hereditary government, just as Paine believed it would. This prediction, therefore, is best understood as an appeal to the British people to change their own government and thereby win the applause of posterity.

“It is easy to conceive, that a band of interested men, such as Placemen, Pensioners, Lords of the bed-chamber, Lords of the kitchen, Lords of the necessary-house, and the Lord knows what besides, can find as many reasons for monarchy as their salaries, paid at the expense of the country, amount to; but if I ask the farmer, the manufacturer, the merchant, the tradesman, and down through all the occupations of life to the common labourer, what service monarchy is to him? he can give me no answer. If I ask him what monarchy is, he believes it is something like a sinecure.”

This quotation distills several important aspects of Paine’s argument about monarchy’s inherent absurdity. He presents monarchy as something that benefits the well-connected at the expense of the working masses. “Placemen” and “Pensioners” are 18th-century code for a special kind of corruption, namely, the filling of government offices with men who perform no useful service but are loyal to the current ministry and/or the status quo. This sort of office, which pays much and demands little except in taxes on the public, is known as a “sinecure.” As he explains throughout the book, Paine regards this sort of corruption as a direct consequence of hereditary government.

“The parts are not foreigners to each other, like democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy.”

Paine refers to a “well-constituted republic” (90) based on the principle of equal representation. He distinguishes this republic from the British system, which attempts to balance three different forms of government: monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. Paine regards monarchy and aristocracy as unnatural and tyrannical, while democracy can only be practical on a large scale through republican representation.

“He could not suppose that the hordes of miserable poor, with which old countries abound, could be any other than those who had not yet had time to provide for themselves. Little would he think they were the consequence of what in such countries is called government.”

“He” refers to a hypothetical “spectator who knew nothing of the world, and who was put into it merely to make his observations” (105). This spectator, according to Paine, would have to guess that the oldest societies in Europe are in fact the newest, arguing that the spectator would find no other explanation for the grinding poverty in those countries except to assume that they had not been around long enough “to provide for themselves.” Significantly, Paine attributes poverty to monarchical government—an argument he will develop later in Part 2.

“If universal peace, civilization, and commerce, are ever to be the happy lot of man, it cannot be accomplished but by a revolution in the system of governments.”

In the previous quotation, Paine prepares the reader for Part 2 by connecting poverty with government. Here he goes a step further and suggests that ridding the world of hereditary governments and replacing them with governments based on the will of the people could result, among other things, in the end of wars.

“All hereditary government is in its nature tyranny.”

This is a succinct summary of Paine’s argument against monarchy and aristocracy. At the end of this same paragraph, Paine explains that to “inherit a government, is to inherit the people, as if they were flocks and herds” (114). Hereditary government is, therefore, “in its nature tyranny,” because all legitimate power flows from the people, and not through birthright or usurpation.

“But the government of America, which is wholly on the system of representation, is the only real republic in character and in practice, that now exists.”

Defenders of the 18th-century British constitution often described it as a balance between the three basic forms of government: monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. Paine adds to this government list “representative” government, which he associates with republicanism (118). America qualifies as the only “real republic” because the United States has neither monarchy nor aristocracy, and it incorporates the best of democracy by extending it over a wide sphere through representation. France, which Paine obviously admires, does not yet qualify as a true republic in practice because the king, though shackled by constitutional restraints, remains on the throne as of early 1792.

“A constitution is not the act of a government, but of a people constituting a government; and government without a constitution, is power without a right.”

Paine here embraces the American and French principles of constitutionalism, in which the people as a whole are sovereign. The only proper authority, therefore, comes from the people through a written constitution, which establishes a government. If a government operates without a constitutional grant of authority direct from the people, as in Britain, then it lacks legitimacy and is, by definition, a usurpation of power.

“Government by precedent, without regard to the principle of the precedent, is one of the vilest systems that can be set up.”

Elaborating on the prior quotation, Paine offers one of his strongest denunciations of the British constitution, which, as he explains elsewhere, does not actually exist. Unable to cite a written document that amounts to an expression of the people’s will, defenders of the British government are left to describe their constitution as, among other things, a series of precedents. This means that whatever the government does can, in theory, become a part of the nation’s constitution. For Paine, this is a horrifying principle that enables tyranny and confuses a simple act of government with a constitution, which can originate only in the sovereign people.

“Were a government so constructed, that it could not go on unless a goose or a gander were present in the senate, the difficulties would be just as great and as real on the flight or sickness of the goose, or the gander, as if it were called a King.”

Paine combines serious political philosophy with occasional irreverent humor at the expense of monarchs, aristocrats, and their supporters. This style helps account for the book’s popularity, as well as the British government’s strenuous efforts to suppress publication. The analogy of the “goose” presents monarchy as absurd, for any simple creature might be “called a King” and produce the same circumstances as now prevail in hereditary governments.

“It shows that man, were he not corrupted by governments, is naturally the friend of man, and that human nature is not of itself vicious.”

Paine refers to a palpable sense of amity developing between the people of Britain and the people of France in the early years of the French Revolution. He blames hereditary governments for inflaming popular passions and turning natural friends into habitual enemies, all for the purpose of fighting wars and keeping up large military establishments that justify excessive taxation, which in turn supports the corrupt government. This quotation also answers those who insist that governments must be large and powerful so as to restrain human beings, who are naturally vicious; it is, in fact, the clearest statement of Paine’s optimistic views on human nature.

“No question has arisen within the records of history that pressed with the importance of the present.”

The “question” to which Paine refers involves the future of free government in the world. He observes the forces of despotism in Europe, in particular the Continental autocrats, massing against the friends of the Revolution in France. He notes that the current clash between liberty and tyranny is unlike any contest in memory. Implied in this quotation is Paine’s argument that Britain has the power to tilt the balance by throwing off its own hereditary government and joining France and America in an alliance of free nations.

“It is monarchical and aristocratical government only that requires ignorance for its support.”

As part of an ambitious and detailed plan for improving the lives of the people by eliminating the fraud and waste that accompanies hereditary government, Paine proposes a system of compulsory public education that would include the children of the impoverished. In addition to giving those children a chance in life, public education would strengthen the new republican government Paine hopes to see rise in Britain. His characterization of monarchy as depending upon “ignorance” once more suggests that monarchy is an inherently corrupt system that can only exist through deceit and fraud.

“In short, the evils of the aristocratical system are so great and numerous, so inconsistent with everything that is just, wise, natural, and beneficent, that when they are considered, there ought not to be a doubt that many, who are now classed under that description, will wish to see such a system abolished.”

Paine addresses the general iniquities of the hereditary system in multiple passages across different chapters, but here he argues that even many aristocrats will want to see aristocracy “abolished.” These would be the noble parents’ younger children, who inherit nothing under primogeniture and are left to make their own way in the world. As a result, many are placed into useless government offices and thereby supported at public expense.

“The fraud, hypocrisy, and imposition of governments, are now beginning to be too well understood to promise them any long career. The farce of monarchy and aristocracy, in all countries, is following that of chivalry, and Mr. Burke is dressing for the funeral.”

Here Paine summarizes his attack on hereditary governments, which he believes will not long exist in the world. In his critique of the French Revolution, Burke connected chivalry with aristocracy and lamented that the passing of the latter would mean the end of the former. Paine mocks this idea, depicting Burke as “dressing for the funeral.” In a broader sense, Paine’s reference to Burke serves as a reminder that Paine’s entire book originated as a direct response to Burke, which is noteworthy because Burke’s name appears throughout Part 1 but only sporadically in Part 2. Paine has moved beyond Burke’s specific criticisms into a much larger discussion of government and the rights of the people.

“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.”

This is the clearest and most impassioned statement of both the principles and the plan Paine lays out in Part 2, Chapter 5, for a just republican government. The key here is Paine’s explicit connection between a country’s constitution and government on one hand and the condition of its people on the other. Reforming the British government along the lines of the American and French governments, according to Paine, not only would give the British an actual constitution but would improve the material lives of all.