Thomas Paine: "Rights of Man"
Thomas Paine made his name writing Common Sense and The American Crisis, pamphlets that galvanized pro-independence sentiment during the American Revolution. However, his political philosophy finds its most complete expression in Rights of Man, a treatise composed in Paris during the French Revolution.
In response to conservative arguments, Paine draws upon a tradition of political thought that emerged in the late 17th century, when the English parliament enumerated individual rights and limited the power of kings, but retained the aristocracy and church hierarchy with their privileges. Paine argues—building on John Locke and others—that the rights of the individual originate in human nature and that governments exist to protect those rights.
He rejects the authority of traditional structures of society such as aristocracy as unjustifiable privilege. In his second volume, Paine coined the phrase “The Age of Reason,” holding that the establishment of societies based on philosophical principles of the Enlightenment would usher in a new age free from oppression.
Unless otherwise indicated (§), all items on exhibit are from the Sid Lapidus '59 Collection on Liberty and the American Revolution, Princeton University Library. All items on loan from other libraries are gifts of Sid Lapidus.
Rights of Man: Being an Answer to Mr. Burke's Attack on the French Revolution, 1791
Thomas Paine (1737–1809)
London: Printed for J. S. Jordan
Rights of Man is explicitly a response to Edmund Burke (1729–1797), an English member of Parliament who argued that the traditional forms of British government served better to insure a happy, prosperous society than did radical equality. Paine argued that customary practices imposed the will of past generations on the current body politic, undermining the people’s right to determine their own interests.
A Discourse on the Love of Our Country, Delivered on Nov. 4, 1789, at the Meeting-House in the Old Jewry, to the Society for Commemorating the Revolution in Great Britain, 1789
Richard Price (1723–1791)
London: Printed for T. Cadell
The chain of publication and riposte that led to Rights of Man begins with Richard Price (1723–1791), a writer on philosophy and politics. His reaction to the French Revolution was an enthusiastic embrace of its democratic reforms, which he contrasted to the British system in which the upper classes held sway over the formal structures of governance. This work directly provoked Edmund Burke to compose his Reflection on the Revolution in France.
Reflections on the Revolution in France, and on the Proceedings in Certain Societies in London Relative to That Event, 1790
Edmund Burke (1729–1797)
London: Printed for J. Dodley
Edmund Burke, a member of the British parliament, was a supporter of the principle of representative democracy, and also of the American colonists’ demands for greater self-government before the Revolutionary War. However, he was concerned that the French revolutionaries, in their zeal to establish a society on purely rational principles, were disregarding structures such as monarchy, the nobility, and the church, which—in the best cases—served to channel people’s instinctive desires to understand their place in society and to preserve order.
A Vindication of the Rights of Men, in a Letter to the Right Honourable Edmund Burke; Occasioned by His Reflections on the Revolution in France, 1790
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797)
London: Printed for J. Johnson
Mary Wollstonecraft was one of the few women actively writing on political matters in this era. She found Burke’s arguments lacking in regard for the common person, whose dignity was insulted in an unequal system, and whose miseries of oppression could not be remedied through the exercise of their rights.
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects, 1792
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797)
London: Printed for J. Johnson
A glaring oversight in the writings of Price, Paine, and others was the failure to discuss the subjection to which women were victims in all the political systems of Europe. This book is a critique of the ways in which girls were taught to behave, which rendered them unwilling to assert their natural rights. It envisions a reform of society in which the exercise of women’s rights leads to moral reform.
Rights of Englishmen: An Antidote to the Poison Now Vending by the Transatlantic Republican Thomas Paine, 1791
Isaac Hunt (approximately 1742–1809)
London: Printed for J. Bew
Isaac Hunt was a Loyalist in the American Revolution, supporting the British government. Forced to England during the war, he wrote in defense of the British system, seeing in Paine’s preferred democracy a sham in which democracy is proclaimed but women and enslaved people have no say. For Hunt, the British system suffices to preserve the rights of individuals without destroying the traditions which ward off the tyranny of an unchecked mob.
An Answer to Paine's Rights of Man, 1796
Henry Mackenzie (1745–1831)
Philadelphia: Printed for William Cobbett
By 1796, the French Revolution had gone through the Reign of Terror in which many conservatives and moderates had been executed for their politics. William Cobbett, an English immigrant also known as “Peter Porcupine,” published works defending the British government’s war with revolutionary France, including this tract by Henry Mackenzie. He observes that radical democracy is unpredictable while the British system better preserves stability while being open to reform.
Letters to Thomas Payne, in Answer to His Late Publication on the Rights of Man, 1796
Graham Jepson (1734–1811)
London: Printed for J. Pridden, around 1792
The Burke-Paine exchange roused so much interest that even little-known figures such as the Anglican clergyman Graham Jepson felt compelled to weigh in. Jepson rejects Paine’s call to make universal the democratic reforms seen in France, finding in the British system as much individual freedom as may be found in other countries, and a preservation of the rights to property missing from the radical changes wrought by the French Revolution.
An Answer to Pain's Rights of Man, 1793
John Quincy Adams (1767–1848)
London: Printed for J. Stockdale
Many Americans sympathized with the Paris revolutionaries, seeing a commonality between the American Revolution and the French. In this early work by the future president, John Quincy Adams emphasizes arguments made by his father John—also a U.S. president—that the American Revolution was needed to reclaim the colonists’ rights, but Paine was mistaken in urging a revolution in Britain, because Britons had retained the rights gained in 1688, when King James II was overthrown in favor of William III and Mary II, who issued the Bill of Rights that guaranteed certain limits on the power of the monarch.
The Genuine Trial of Thomas Paine, for a Libel Contained in the Second Part of Rights of Man, 1793
Thomas Paine (1737-1809)
London: Printed for J.S. Jordan
Notwithstanding the popularity of defenses of the rights of British subjects, the government, led by Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger, sought to suppress the ideas of Thomas Paine. In 1792 Paine was tried in absentia for seditious libel—publishing material with the purpose of undermining the authority of the king’s government. The transcript of the trial, including the defense by Thomas Erskine, was a popular pamphlet. Paine was found guilty and exiled, and his publishers were also prosecuted.
Death mask of Thomas Paine, 1809 §
John Wesley Jarvis (1780–1839)
Plaster of Paris
When Thomas Paine died in New York in 1809, the artist John Wesley Jarvis preserved his likeness by making a plaster cast of his face. Jarvis covered the face of Paine’s corpse with wax. After it hardened, he poured plaster into the wax; the plaster filled the empty space in the wax, leaving this three-dimensional representation of Paine’s face.
Thomas Paine, 1791 §
Charles Willson Peale (1741–1827)
Engraving. London: J. Ridgway
In his lifetime, Paine was the subject of great fascination. Charles Willson Peale, a portraitist who was aligned with the American independence movement, painted a likeness of Paine in 1783 to hang in his Philadelphia gallery next to other Patriots, with the intention of celebrating the newly-won independence of the United States. As Rights of Man spread Paine’s fame in England, many people wanted to buy copies of Peale’s portrait. In 1791, Peale made this engraving to allow multiple copies of the portrait to be distributed.
Tom Paine’s Nightly Pest, 1792 §
James Gillray (1756–1815)
Etching with engraving. London: Hannah Humphrey
In this satirical print, made just before Paine’s trial, he is depicted living in poverty and having a nightmare in which the spirits of “Justice”—which is to say, traditional British governance—accuse him of serious crimes. Paine’s ideas are ridiculed in the titles of books such as The Rights of Farthing Candles, proving their Equality with the Sun and Moon, and The Necessity of a Reform in the Planetary System.
Wha Wants Me?, 1792 §
Isaac Cruikshank (around 1756–around 1811)
Colored engraving. Probably London: S. Fores
In 1792, Paine offered his services to the revolutionary government of France. In this cartoon, he is shown as bringing to any prospective employers a host of ills including rebellion, treason, anarchy, and “national & private ruin.” All the while, he is trampling upon those aspects of British governance that conservatives held dear, such as loyalty, obedience to the laws, industry, inheritance, religion, and protection of property.
Ride for Ride. Reunion des trois ordres. A Concise Answer to Burke's Pamphlet, circa 1790 §
Artist unknown.
Hand-colored etching. Printed in London by an unknown artisan
This English reproduction of an engraving originally made in France in 1789 uses images to summarize the events of that year. In the ancien regime (the system of government before the revolution), there were three “orders” of society: aristocrats, churchmen, and common people. Before the revolution, this artist suggests, the commoners supported the other two orders (seen in the right-hand panel in which the churchman and the aristocrat are riding the commoner’s back). Then the orders were united in casting off the old ways (seen in the middle panel where the three figures embrace). Finally, the other two orders are supporting the commoners (seen in the left-hand panel as the commoner rides the aristocrat’s back).
