The Rights of Man

A native of Ireland and a member of Parliament for nearly three decades, Edmund Burke (1729-1797) wrote Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), which denounced the French revolutionaries as vengeful, bloodthirsty, and ignorant of the principles of order and good government, which he believed were embodied in the British constitution. Though expensively priced and directed to the literate classes in Britain and France, Burke’s Reflections sold an impressive 20,000 copies by the end of 1790. Paine wrote Rights of Man as a direct answer to Burke.

Like Paine, Burke already had made a name for himself by the time his most famous work appeared in print. Ironically, in the mid-1770s, Burke shared Paine’s sympathy with the American colonists. In March 1775, he delivered an impassioned speech vindicating American grievances and blaming the British government for rising tensions with the American colonies. He even presented an elaborate peace proposal designed to meet the colonists’ demands while preserving the British Empire in America. When war broke out, Burke continued to blame the government in London for hostilities.

Burke’s intense opposition to the French Revolution, therefore, must have left Paine astonished, for Paine regarded the French Revolution as a continuation and fulfillment of the American Revolution. The first part of Rights of Man answers Burke’s Reflections on nearly every page. Aside from Paine himself, Burke rates as by far the most important figure to appear in Rights of Man. In later chapters, Paine suggests that Burke probably receives a government pension and that this explains Burke’s ardent support for the status quo.

Born in Wales, Dr. Richard Price (1723-1791) lived nearly his entire life in London, where he established a reputation as an enlightened, dissenting-church minister and a staunch supporter of both the American and French Revolutions. He also maintained a regular correspondence with fellow liberals, such as Thomas Jefferson. 

On November 4, 1789, Price delivered a sermon in praise of the French Revolution, which he compared to England’s Glorious Revolution of 1688-1689. This sermon prompted Edmund Burke to write Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), refuting Price’s argument and insisting that the Glorious Revolution rested on far different principles than those animating the French Revolution. Paine, who shared Price’s sympathy with the French Revolution, introduces Dr. Price within the first few pages of Rights of Man. Paine defends Price against what he perceives as Burke’s unjust attack, though Paine then proceeds to champion the principles of the French Revolution as superior to those of the Glorious Revolution.

A French nobleman, the Marquis de Lafayette (1757-1834) devoted his life to what he regarded as the great principles of the American and French Revolutions, becoming one of the most famous public figures of his age. As a young officer, he commanded troops during the American Revolutionary War, including at the decisive siege of Yorktown, Virginia, in 1781. In the early years of the French Revolution, he served as both a legislator and commander of a militia.

Paine first refers to Lafayette as a principal author of France’s Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, adopted by the National Constituent Assembly in August 1789. Lafayette then appears as the judicious commander of the militia that marched on Versailles in early October of that year; Paine, in fact, credits Lafayette with helping maintain order while securing the king and preserving the Revolution.

Like Paine himself, Lafayette later resisted the Revolution’s drift toward revenge-driven violence. Lafayette fled France in 1792 but was captured by France’s enemies in present-day Belgium and imprisoned for five years. After his release, he continued to speak and write in support of liberty but otherwise kept a low profile, occupying no government post during the rule of Napoleon Bonaparte. In 1824, Lafayette made a grand tour of the United States, where he reunited with old comrades such as Thomas Jefferson and was feted as an international hero.

Louis XVI (1754-1793) ruled France from 1774 until September 1792, when French revolutionaries abolished the monarchy. He was executed by guillotine on January 21, 1793. The king’s execution triggered war between France and Britain 10 days later on February 1.

In Rights of Man, Louis XVI appears not as a villain but as something of a figurehead. Burke chastises the French for rebelling against a mild-mannered king, but Paine replies that the French in fact had rebelled against the institution of absolute monarchy, not against the person of Louis XVI. Later in Rights of Man’s first part, Louis XVI appears during Paine’s narrative of the events of October 5-6, 1789, when the Paris militia marched on Versailles.

Author of the US Declaration of Independence, US minister to France, secretary of state, vice-president, and two-term president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) was perhaps the central figure connecting the American and French Revolutions. Although Paine does not mention Jefferson by name, Jefferson’s influence on Rights of Man is clear. For instance, in September 1789, Jefferson wrote a lengthy letter on the subject of one generation’s authority over another. Jefferson argues that the dead have no right to bind the living, an argument Paine develops in Rights of Man.