Thomas Paine's Rights of Man 1791-92 .sx A bi-centenary assessment .sx H.T. Dickinson .sx Born in 1736 , the son of a poor Quaker corset or stay-maker , Thomas Paine rose by his own efforts to become the most famous political propagandist of the late eighteenth century and an active participant in the American Revolution , the French Revolution and the campaign for radical reform in Britain ( 1) .sx In America he wrote Common Sense ( 1776 ) , the most famous and widely-read tract on the crisis in British-American relations .sx In France , soon after emerging from an alarming spell in a Parisian goal , expecting execution at any time , he wrote The Age of Reason ( 1794-95 ) , the most notorious Deist onslaught on the Christian churches and on the Bible as the revealed word of God .sx For most Britons , however , both in his own day and ever since , his best and most famous work was the Rights of Man ( 1791-92 ) , which remains as fresh and almost as widely read today , 200 years after its publication ( 2) .sx With its bi-centenary upon us , it deserves to be celebrated , but first its value needs to be properly assessed .sx The outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789 found Paine back in Britain after a dozen years active political service in America .sx He welcomed the spread of revolution to France and the signs of a radical revival within Britain .sx Shocked by Edmund Burke's violent speech against the French Revolution , delivered to the House of Commons on 9 February 1790 , and aware that Burke was preparing a substantial treatise on the subject , Paine set about preparing a tract to defend the political principles which he believed underpinned and justified the developments in France .sx Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France appeared in November 1790 .sx Working at some speed Paine completed his response before he left for Paris early in 1791 .sx He left the manuscript of the first part of Rights of Man with a small group of radical friends , including William Godwin , Thomas Holcroft and Thomas Brand Hollis .sx The first publisher they approached produced a small print-run in February 1791 , but appears to have been too timid to continue with the assignment .sx On 13 March another publisher , J. S. Jordan , brought out a larger edition .sx The Rights of Man was an immediate success and was widely regarded by reformers as an effective riposte to Burke's Reflections .sx Thomas Cooper promptly recommended it to James Watt :sx I regard it as the 'very jewel of a book :sx the finest book in all the world that ever was or ever will be' - Burke is done up for ever and ever by it - but Paine attacking Burke is dashing out the brains of a butterfly with the club of Hercules .sx .sx The Society for Constitutional Information praised the Rights of Man in their correspondence and helped to distribute it to reform societies across Britain .sx It was rapidly reprinted in London , and editions of it soon appeared in Ireland and the USA .sx On his return to England in July 1791 Paine found himself the hero of the reformers and the target for such conservative tracts as Burke's An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs ( 1791) .sx He set about producing Part Two of Rights of Man and this duly appeared on 16 February 1792 .sx This was even more radical than the first part and a translation of it soon appeared in France .sx It revealed a greater concern with the plight of the poor and it advocated a primitive form of what today we would call a welfare state .sx The Sheffield radicals declared :sx We have derived more true knowledge from the two works of Mr Thomas Paine , entitled Rights of Man , Part the First and Second , than from any other author or subject .sx ...resolved unanimously , That the Thanks of this Society be given to Mr Paine for the affectionate concern he has shewn in his Second Work in behalf of the poor , the infant , and the aged .sx .sx Edmund Burke , on the other hand , condemned it in the House of Commons on 30 April 1792 as an 'infamous libel upon the constitution' .sx Alarmed by the contents of Part Two and by the fact that thousands of copies of cheap editions of the tract were distributed among the lower orders by various radical groups in the country , the government took action .sx Jordan , the publisher , was threatened with prosecution in May 1792 .sx He pleaded guilty to the charge , but was never punished .sx On 21 May Paine himself was summoned to appear at the Court of King's Bench on 8 June , charged with being :sx " a wicked , malicious , seditious and ill-disposed person , and being greatly disaffected to our said Sovereign Lord the now King , and to the happy constitution of this kingdom .sx " .sx On the same day , 21 May , a royal proclamation against seditious writings and publications was issued .sx It called upon all loyal subjects to resist attempts to subvert regular government and it urged magistrates to make diligent enquiries to discover the authors , printers and disseminators of seditious writings .sx At first the government's reaction did little to stem the spread of Paine's ideas .sx Radicals throughout the country sought out copies and it was the most discussed tract of the day .sx The London Corresponding Society raised a subscription for Paine's legal defence .sx When Paine appeared in court on 8 June 1792 his trial was postponed until December .sx He was never in fact to stand trial in person .sx After being elected to the French National Assembly in September 1792 and after being warned by his British friends of the danger he faced in England , he fled the country .sx He only narrowly escaped capture by the authorities .sx He left behind him a printed proof copy of his Letter Addressed to the Addressers on the Late Proclamation ( 1792 ) , in which he rejected the constitutional policy of appealing to parliament to carry out political reforms .sx Instead , he advised the radicals to call a national convention and to draft a new constitution and to create a republican form of government .sx He also defiantly declared that if his arguments were libellous , then :sx let me live the life of a libeller , and let the name of LIBELLER be engraven on my tomb !sx .sx In his absence a special jury at the Court of King's Bench condemned the Rights of Man as seditious libel on 18 December 1792 .sx In the same month a second royal proclamation was issued in an effort to stem the dissemination of seditious writings and the spread of radical societies .sx This elicited hundreds of loyal addresses , many of them signed by hundreds , even thousands , of ordinary citizens .sx Within a few months hundreds of loyalist associations were established throughout the country .sx For many of the associations , alarmed by the violence of the French Revolution and by the rapid spread of radical societies in Britain , Paine came to represent their deepest fears .sx His effigy , often clutching a copy of the Rights of Man in one hand and corsets in the other , was burned amidst great festivity in dozens of towns and villages across Britain .sx In 1793 a government clerk , George Chalmers , using the pseudonym 'Francis Oldys' , produced a libellous biography of Paine , while his principles were condemned in numerous newspapers , pamphlets , sermons , poems and caricatures .sx The two parts of Rights of Man are reputed to have sold 200,000 copies by the end of 1793 .sx While this figure has been repeated by many scholars , it has never been verified and it is probably an exaggeration .sx None the less , since many copies might have been read by more than one person and the work was abridged , excerpted , reviewed and discussed in many newspapers and magazines , there can be little doubt that the Rights of Man was the single most influential work produced by the radical movement in Britain in the late eighteenth century .sx It was at the very centre of one of the most intense and profound ideological debates in British history .sx It is also a work that has been constantly in print this century and it discusses political principles that have remained relevant throughout the last two centuries .sx Why has it merited such attention ?sx Perhaps the most significant aspect of Part One of the Rights of Man was Paine's attempt to shift decisively the British campaign for political reform from its appeal to history , the ancient constitution and the traditional rights of Englishmen to the more radical appeal to the natural , universal , and inalienable rights of man .sx Previously , the majority of British reformers had sought out historical evidence , much of it insecurely based , to justify their demands for political reform .sx Paine had no confidence in this approach .sx He rightly concluded that the historical record did not justify the democratic rights of all citizens , but he went on vigorously to deny that the authority of the past could be used to define and restrict the political rights of succeeding generations :sx there never can exist a parliament , or an description of men , or any generation of men , in any country , possessed of the right or the power of binding and controlling posterity to ' the end of time ' .sx .sx It was necessary therefore to escape from the dead hand of history and from the tyranny of the past .sx Each age must be free to reject the wisdom and decisions of the past .sx It was the living not the dead who must exercise power and their actions should be guided by universal principles and not restricted by previous decisions :sx Every age and generation must be free to act for itself , in all cases , as the ages and generations which preceded it .sx The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave , is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies .sx .sx Instead of appealing to history , Paine based his claims to liberty on the natural rights of all men .sx He was not , of course , the first political propagandist to insist that all men were naturally equal in the sight of God and that their maker had endowed them all with the natural and inalienable rights to life , liberty , and property .sx John Locke had made similar claims in his Second Treatise , a century before , but Locke was not as explicit as Paine in concluding that all men had the positive right to vote and to play an active role in the political process .sx For Locke , the people were sovereign only when the made or un-made civil governments .sx While a civil government subsisted , it was the legislature that exercised sovereign authority .sx It is possible , as Richard Ashcraft has claimed , that Locke implied that all men had the right to choose their legislators , but , unlike Paine , Locke never made this claim clear and explicit .sx Richard Price and Joseph Priestley also used natural rights arguments in the later eighteenth century , but they too failed to take their assumptions to their logical conclusion .sx Unlike Paine , they never condemned monarchy and aristocracy , and they did not explicitly support universal manhood suffrage .sx Paine was , in fact , the first political theorist to draw genuinely democratic conclusions from his belief in universal and inalienable natural rights .sx He rejected hereditary monarchy , aristocracy or the mixed form of government Britain enjoyed in the eighteenth century .sx Instead , he favoured a representative democracy and a republican form of government .sx He insisted that the whole people were the sovereign authority and it was their will which created , sustained and , if necessary , brought down , civil government .sx He regarded civil government as a necessary evil that men accepted as the means of protecting their natural rights to life , liberty , property and the pursuit of happiness .sx These natural rights were not surrendered on the creation of civil society .sx On the contrary , in order to preserve these natural rights , all men consented to an original contract that created a written constitution which converted these natural rights into civil liberties and which established the necessary machinery of government to protect these civil liberties .sx Paine assumed that popular sovereignty required universal manhood suffrage so that all men would have the right actively to participate in the affairs of civil society ( 3) .sx In his view , no man could claim a political role based on hereditary right .sx