In 1790 Edmund Burke published Reflections on the Revolution in France. It was an outrageous attack on the French Revolution, and a shock to the many friends of the Revolution. This shock was increased by the fact it came from Burke, who had a reputation as a liberal Whig and a brave parliamentary supporter of the American Revolution. One of those shocked, and also offended, was Thomas Paine. He was well known as the author of Common Sense, a phenomenal best seller in support of American Independence, and was thus in an excellent position to defend the Revolution of the French.
The first part of The Rights of Man came out in 1790, only a few months after Burke’s Reflections, and a considerable part of the beginning of the book is a refutation of Burke’s attacks. Paine often uses humor to do this. He makes several jokes alluding to the rumor that Burke was receiving a pension from George III, but my favorite joke is near the beginning of the book. Paine quotes some foolish assertion that Burke makes in his book about government by consent, then performs a reductio ad absurdum on the statement, which makes it even more foolish. Paine then pretends to be confused, and sarcastically defers to "the paradoxical genius of Mr. Burke."
When not using his considerable wit to make fun of Burke, Paine savages him and his ideas. What most offends Paine is the idea of heredity government. Burke traces the legitimacy of his government to the ascension of William and Mary, which he says is legitimate because Parliament passed a resolution calling them and their heirs forever the rulers of England. To this Paine says that even if Parliament had a right to invite "that Dutch Stadtholder" to become King, they had no more authority to make his line rulers forever then they have a right to pass unrepealable laws forever binding, or, for that matter, to pass a law allowing them to live forever! Paine then delves a little further back in history, and traces the institution of the Monarchy not to 1688, but to 1066, when another William, this one from Normandy, imposed his rule on England. In just a few paragraphs Paine confounds hundreds of Burke’s "bulky" pages, which boil down to nothing but appeals to precedent and tradition. All appeals to precedent and tradition ultimately go back to William the Looter and his band of thugs, who after a few generations became the King of England and his aristocrats, but are still no more legitimate then their ancestors were.
Though one wishes to, it would be impossible it report on all of the brilliant points that Paine makes against Burke in his book, which was dedicated to General Washington and the Marquis de Lafayette. And, anyway, if I were to only dwell on refutations of The Rights of Man it would be an injustice to the book, which is mainly an exposition of the rights of man, and a plan to apply those rights in a reform of the English Government.
Rather then look to "musty documents" which claim to "grant" them, Paine says that rights by their nature cannot be granted, because if they can be granted then they can be revoked, and if they can be revoked then they are privileges, not rights. Paine then, like Locke, finds the origins of rights in nature, and the purpose of governments is to protect them. They are definitely not pacts "between the living, the dead, and those yet to be born," or "between those who govern and those who are governed," as some maintain, but rather voluntary associations for the sole benefit of their members. Therefore all institutions in a nation’s government that do not benefit the nation itself are illegitimate. This includes the king and nobility, and also the large military establishment, which colludes with the other institutions to increase its own power and revenue in wars that even when they are won are of no benefit to the nation.
Paine’s plan to reform the English Government comes last. He calls for a national Assembly to create a written English Constitution, hopefully modeled on the American one. He rails at the expense of the monarchy, its court, and the huge and worthless nobility, proposing an elimination of titles in England, as in America and France. Paine proposes a scheme to eliminate primogeniture, which he calls "the despotism of the family," and is responsible for the continuation of the aristocracy. Paine does not just call for these general measures to reform the English Government, but proposes an entire budget. He shows that by an alliance with France and America, England would lose its primary enemies, and together these nations could force others to disarm, and afterwards England could save a huge amount of money on her army and navy. This can not happen as long as England has a king however. As I showed before, a king and his court are always looking for a way to increase their revenue, and wars provide and excellent excuse to raise taxes, sell monopoly rights, debase the coinage, sieze foodstocks, and interfere in the economy in other ways. With the money saved from the elimination of war and aristocracy, Paine call for the elimination of many taxes, such as the tax on windows, on coal, on wagons, and on female servants.
Another area of the English government badly in need of reform is the social welfare system. It was at that time not unlike our own: bureaucratic, expensive, unfair, and not very helpful to those whom it is supposed to help. The tax to pay for the system is called the poor-rate, and it is very heavy. Paine proposes that the money saved earlier be used to finance a new system out of general revenue (there being still a lot of money left over after the aforementioned tax cuts). With this new system all the poor-rates would be eliminated. Paine goes into a great deal of detail, with lots of numbers and tables (which I won’t recite), but the point is there shall be a huge amount of money saved, and more gained from the little money that is spent. He also uses some of the money to finance a subsidy for the education of poor children, so they can go to private schools, as he thinks public schools are impractical and expensive.
With his repudiation of Burke’s distortations and his vindication of the principles of the French and Americans Revolutions, together with his proposal to eliminate heredity government and end war, Paine provides in his book powerful and logical ideas that will benefit the vast majority of mankind that does not live off the king and his court. It was a best seller like Common Sense, going into edition after edition. The English government took notice, threatened the publisher of The Rights of Man, and even attempted to arrest Paine. More cynically, they had an intermediary try to buy the copyright to the book, which the government planed to hold and not allow anyone to use. Paine still got it published despite the English Government’s best efforts, and as I said before, it was a huge bestseller in England (and the rest of the world). William Pitt, Prime Minister of England, denounced the book, but on the first day of Parliament that year he proposed many of the same tax cuts that Paine did, showing the great influence of The Rights of Man.
Online versions of most of Paine's writings, including The Rights of Man