The Rights of Man | Page 6

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