Rights of Man

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article or section may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards.
Please help improve this article or replace this tag with a more specific message. This article has been tagged since September 2006. (help, talk)

Rights of Man was written by Thomas Paine in 1791 as a reply to Reflections on the Revolution in France by Edmund Burke. It has been interpreted as a work defending the French Revolution, but it is also a seminal work embodying the ideas of liberty and human equality. Since the ideas are presented in fragments, the book is somewhat inchoate. Paine's lack of a holistic approach may be attributed to the fact that the book was written in two parts. That Paine was one of the greatest pamphleteers of his age is evident from the vigorous approach to writing, and despite the humour that alleviates his sarcastic tone, The Rights of Man is undoubtedly one of the most serious works influencing generations of liberal believers in democracy.

Contents

[edit] History and Influence

[edit] Locke and the Enlightenment

Many of the ideas in The Rights of Man are derived from the concepts of the Age of Enlightenment. John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government particularly influenced Paine who ascribes the origins of rights to nature. Paine emphasises that rights cannot be granted by any charter because this would legally imply they can also be revoked and under such circumstances they would be reduced to privileges.

Paine writes,

“It is a perversion of terms to say that a charter gives rights. It operates by a contrary effect - that of taking rights away. "Rights are inherently in all the inhabitants; but charters, by annulling those rights, in the majority, leave the right, by exclusion, in the hands of a few. ... They...consequently are instruments of injustice. ”
“The fact therefore must be that the individuals themselves, each in his own personal and sovereign right, entered into a compact with each other to produce a government: and 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.”

According to Paine, the sole purpose of the government is to protect the irrefutable rights inherent to every human being. Thus all institutions which do not benefit a nation are illegitimate, including the monarchy (and the nobility) and the military establishment.

[edit] United States History

The statements offered by Paine also appear, though the words are somewhat different, in the United States Declaration of Independence

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.”

[edit] Paine's fundamental statements

The Declaration of the Rights of Man can be approached from his most telling points:

  1. Men are born, and always continue, free and equal in respect of their rights. Civil distinctions, therefore, can be founded only on public utility.
  2. The end of all political associations is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man; and these rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance of oppression.
  3. The nation is essentially the source of all sovereignty; neither can any individual, nor any body of men, be entitled to any authority which is not expressly derived from it.

These three points are similar to the "self-evident truths" expressed in the United States Declaration of Independence.

[edit] Response to Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution

[edit] Aristocracy versus Democracy

The Rights of Man primarily opposes Burke's projected notion of hereditary government. Burke's conservative notion of power centers in the idea that a dictatorial government of the people is necessitated by the corrupt nature of human beings. A staunch supporter of the aristocracy as well as a disbeliever of true democracy, Burke suggests that true social stability would arise if the poverty ridden majority were to be governed by an exclusive minority of wealthy noblemen. According to Burke, the lawful inheritance of wealth or religious power ensured the propriety of power being the exclusive domain of the elite.

Paine, scathingly critical of Burke, uses sarcastic humour to refute his points. Paine's arguments denounce Burke’s assertion of hereditary wisdom and judge his declarations as most offensive.

“Notwithstanding the nonsense, for it deserves no better name, that Mr. Burke has asserted about hereditary rights, and hereditary succession, and that a Nation has not a right to form a Government of itself; it happened to fall in his way to give some account of what Government is. "Government," says he, "is a contrivance of human wisdom. . . Admitting that government is a contrivance of human wisdom, it must necessarily follow, that hereditary succession, and hereditary rights (as they are called), can make no part of it, because it is impossible to make wisdom hereditary.”

[edit] Governmental Heredity

In the Reflections on the French Revolution, Burke traces the legitimacy of an aristocratic government to the Parliamentary resolution declaring William and Mary of Orange and their heirs to be the true rulers of England. Paine asserts that the institution of Monarchy should not be traced back to 1688 but to 1066 when William of Normandy forcibly imposed his rule on England. Paine declares Burke’s argument null and void since the appeal to precedent and tradition is merely an appeal to the invading looters who deprived the original Anglo-Saxons of their right to freedom.

[edit] The Rights of Man and reforms in the English Government

Paine ends the book by proposing to reform the English government. His first demand is a written English constitution created by a national assembly but modelled along the lines of the American one. Further he suggests eliminiation of all aristocratic titles, seeking a democracy which would exclude such unfair practises as primogeniture which inevitably leads to what he calls “despotism of the family”. He proposes a budget which calls for an alliance with France and America and the eventual doing away with war and military expenses. He also suggests economic reforms in the shape of tax-cuts for the poor and subsidies for their education. Finally he proposed a sort of “progressive taxation”, declaring that more wealthy estates should be taxed more heavily to prevent the emergence of the hereditary aristocracy Burke prefers to lighten the burden of taxes borne primarily by the working class and the poor.

[edit] Dedication

Paine’s influence was perceptible in both the great revolutions of the eighteenth century. The Rights of Man is dedicated to General Washington and the Marquis de Lafayette acknowledging the importance of the American and the French Revolution in formulating the principles of modern democratic governance. Thomas Alva Edison accredited him as one of the true fathers of the American Revolution declaring, "He was the equal of Washington in making American liberty possible. Where Washington performed Paine devised and wrote. "

[edit] Impact

In line with his views on individual human rights, when the French called for the execution of the monarch Paine suggested that the monarch be exiled to America, where he would then have to work for a living. This suggestion was ignored and Robespierre had the monarch imprisoned and sentenced to death.

When the French Revolution broke out Paine went to France where despite his ignorance of the French language he was promptly elected to the National Convention. His absence from England at this time was fortuitious because the publication of The Rights of Man caused such a furore in the country that Paine was put on trial in absentia and convicted for seditious libel against the crown.

[edit] See also

Thomas Paine was not the only advocate of the rights of man or author of a work with that title. The working class radical Thomas Spence has some claim to be amongst the first in England to use the phrase. His 1775 lecture, usually titled 'The Rights of Man', along with his later 'The Rights of Infants', offer what some have claimed to be a proto-communist alternative to Paine.

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../r/i/g/Rights_of_Man_ea11.html"